BH 

B 



HP 



; H 



aros 



easw 



■ 






am 



^Smm. 



mm 

wxm 



I 



Class 
Book 




1" 



(bpyrightlf__. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/tohellbackmytripOOmorr 



BACK 



V GOUCIITkr MOUIll 



ARE THE CREATION OF GENIUS 



Excellence in 
a Piano Is more 
than case. 
tion, strings, 
and pedah 
Is that some- 
thing, over and 
above all these, 
which the ge- 
nlus of the 
builder puts 
into it. 




The 


Metro iv 


itan 


Music Co. 


since 


1879 has 


been 


known as 


a gc 


od music 


store, 


an abso- 1 


lutely 


safe place » 


to tr 


ade — and 


its m 




Is of 


the vorr * 


best. 





IVERS & POND, LUDWIG PIANOS, 
DYER BROS.' PLAYER PIANO, 
PIANOLA PLAYER PIANOS, VIC 
TROLAS AND VICTOR RECORDS. 

SHEET MUSIC 

FOR HOME, RECITAL AND TEACHER 

Pianos Tuned and Repaired 
Pianos for Rent 

The Metropolitan Music Co. 

41-43 SO. SIXTH STREET, MINNEAPOLIS 



TO HELL AND BACK 



MY TRIP TO 



SOUTH AMERICA 



BY 



SI 



REV. GOLIGHTLY MORRILL 

PASTOR OF PEOPLE'S CHURCH, 
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN., U. S. A. 



ILLUSTRATIONS AND PHOTOS BY 

LOWELL L. MORRILL 



M. A. DONOHUE & CO. 
CHICAGO 



rz 



: 



j& ifp 



Copyright, 1914, by 
G. L. Morrill. 



ff&* 



'CU391G47 

DEC ~4 1914 




DANTE UP-TO-DATE 
G. L. Morrill in Aymara Indian Garb 



DEDICATED TO SOUTH AMERICA'S PATRON SAINT 




A WORD TO THE WISE 

Truth wears no fig-leaf. I intend to tell 
the naked trnth abont South America. The 
diplomat dare not, the guest cannot, the busi- 
ness boomer will not, the subsidized press 
and steamship companies do not, but the 
preacher who pays his own bills can afford 
to tell nothing else. 

Dante imagined he went to hell and wrote 
a poem. I traveled to South America and 
saw enough to fill an encyclopaedia, but out 
of regard to the patience and piety of my 
readers have limited it to the present 
volume. 

G. L. M. 



BOOKS BY G. L. MORRILL 

GOLIGHTLY 'BOUND THE GLOBE 

TRACKS OF A TENDERFOOT 

PARSON'S PILGRIMAGE 

HERE AND THERE 

DRIFTWOOD 

A MUSICAL MINISTER 

MUSINGS 

THE MORALIST 

PEOPLE'S PULPIT 

EASTER ECHOES 

UPPER CUTS 

FIRESIDE FANCIES 



CONTENTS 



Page 

On the Way 1 

Chicago . . . 1 

Washington 1 

St. George 2 

Philadelphia 3 

New York 4 

The R. M. S. P 5 

San Salvador 9 

Cuba 9 

An English Eden 11 

A Wet Town 13 

The Big Ditch 14 

Panama New and Old 15 

A House-Boat 17 

Closed Ecuador 19 

A Dry Town 21 

Straw Lids 22 

A Rocky Time 23 

Fragrant Islands 24 

First Lessons in Spanish.. . 26 

Stalled 26 

Pizarro's Town 27 

A Church Tramp 28 

Old Bones 30 

A Real Devil 30 

Lima Beans 31 

Bully Sport 32 

Chamber of Horrors 34 

Jail-Birds 35 

A Dead Town , , . 37 

The Celestial Railway .... 38 

Soroche 41 



Page 

A Wild Ride 43 

Callous Callao 45 

Perils of the Deep 46 

West Coasters 47 

An Ancient Mariner 48 

Very Bad 49 

Breakers 50 

Marooned 51 

A Sandwich 54 

Intoxicated 55 

Bells and Bigots 56 

Ratti Juliaca 58 

Instruments of Torture ... 60 

The Llama 61 

Curious Cuzco 62 

Discovered 63 

Wall Street 64 

A Giant Rockpile 65 

Those Incas 66 

Religious Rackets 67 

Up Hill 69 

Peru-na 70 

Puno 70 

On Lake Titicaca 71 

A Rubber Man 72 

Close Calls 73 

Peaceful La Paz 76 

Sunday Shoppers 77 

On to the Dance 79 

Pious Orgies 80 

Night Airs 81 

High Living 81 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Dante Up-to-date Frontispiece *S 

South America's Patron Saint 41/ 

A Peruvian Penelope 20 /" 

Coasting Down the Andes 21 ^ 

In a Rut 62 w 

Bolivian Camels 72 • 

Holy Jumpers 73 

An Old Settler 84 

Rapid Transit in Chile 94 

Seeing Santiago 95 ]/ 

In Hard Straits 112 

King of the Penguin Islands 116 

Cast Up by the Sea 117 v ' 

A Bull Market 120 

A Fast Race 121 

Brazilian Sugar Loaf. 148 

Church Advertising in Rio 149 

Bread in Old Venezuela 176 

"Safety First" 177 



TO HELL AND BACK 

ON THE WAY 

CHICAGO 



HELL has been glowingly described as a popular and 
populous place and since I had so often been told to 
go there I bought a ticket for South America. 

Chicago was our first stop. The city divides honor 
with bean-eating Boston as a windy burg, puffing itself up with 
pride over what it should be most ashamed. 

The herd of humanity rushes here like cattle to Armour's 
slaughter house, to become food for jails, hospitals, poorhouses, 
asylums and cemeteries. 

Shelley said Hell was a city very much like London, but 
then he never saw Chicago. From what I saw and heard, "If 
Christ came to Chicago" he must have left on the next train. 



WASHINGTON 



WASHINGTON is a city of magnificent distances and 
liars. The first thing I saw at the station was a foun- 
gg|rag) tain statue erected by a K. C. un-American society with 
* a ^ 5feM3> | government funds to the mythical discoverer of Amer- 
ica, Christopher Columbus, and I remembered how the Greeks 
builded monuments in memory of their myths. 

Since the red lights have been extinguished there isn't much 
to see here except the Monument, from which the black stone 
sent from Rome was taken and thrown into the Potomac with a 
big splash; the White House where the mint beds lie scentless 
and dead; the Library, where I asked for my book and the 
man who had a remarkable memory for facts, said as he handed 
it to me, "Here it is,, just as good as new — nobody has asked for 
it since you did ten years ago." 

The Capitol is an imposing building on the credulity of the 
voters and a whited sepulcher full of godless grafters, lawless 



2 TO HELL AND BACK 

lobbyists, reactionary misrepresentatives and stealing senators 
who should be sent to jail or retired to private life. The Mint 
seemed to be the only place to make easy money, but an old 
colored driver told me it was hard to make an honest living 
now because everybody was so fast and wanted to ride in auto- 
mobiles. He sood in front of the Mint and coined words about 
the riches of heaven, saying he was trying to get there and I 
might too. Then he pointed out the path, showed his tracts, 
and though they were small and unlike his feet they represented 
ten cents. 

ST. GEORGE 

YOU should always visit the grave of your mother and 
the father of your country, so we ran down to Mount 
Vernon, America's Mecca, on a flat-tired cattle car, 
while the conductor bawled out the beauties of Arling- 
ton Heights, Alexandria and the Potomac. At the grounds we 
were offered coffee and sandwiches and an old wrinkled darkey 
handed me a piece of cherry wood which he said "I done sawn 
off the tree which Marsa Washington planted." 

An air of melancholy seemed to pervade the mansion, not 
for the illustrious dead, but because the vandal visitors were 
screened off from the historic rooms and so found it impossible 
to steal as souvenirs the key of the Bastile, George's watch, 
Martha's silver, the family china and piano. 

Refreshed by a cut of cherry pie we passed by the cherry 
tree spot, where George never told a lie, to the tomb where he 
lies forever. 

His historical negative has been retouched until it has ceased 
to be human. We have made him a tin god and Saint George. 

Did George ever lie or steal or swear or drink or fall into 
a debauch? Doubtless he did. It can never be proved that he 
did not, for if it could be then he were like no other man in the 
history of the world except the sinless man of Galilee. 

The tower of Pisa leans and is thus attractive. Moses got 
angry and smashed the tables of stone, David was guilty of adul- 
tery and murder, Peter was coward, liar and swearer, but they 
all hold the heart of humanity because they were human, and 
though sinners were forgiven. 

Washington's memory is honored when we show his piety 
and patriotism in our public and private life instead of limiting 



TO HELL AND BACK 3 

it to a masquerade ball, a new kind of breakfast food or a two- 
cent postage stamp. 

Returned by steamboat and found all "quiet on the Potomac" 
until a Southern gentleman, who sat in front of me chewing 
tobacco, made a cuspidor of my eye, which I resented as the son 
of a New Jersey veteran, and we almost fought over again the 
uncivil war. Before leaving that night I took a Turkish bath. 
One who visits Washington needs to, and my talkative attendant 
told me stories of private and political life that were warmer 
than the hot room and in such fast colors that water wouldn't 
wash them out. 



PHILADELPHIA 



WE took the B. and O., Bumps and Ouch, road as a prep- 
aration for mountain-climbing in the Andes. I made 
the trip without safety because in making the curves 
my hollow-ground razor made me look like one of the 
battle-scarred veterans of the war-region through which we were 
traveling. 

The Quaker city of brotherly love and breakfast food was 
reached. Though it was only 7 :30 in the evening the man in the 
information booth had retired and the paper I bought was two 
days old. 'There was tumult in the city," the poet tells us, 
when the Liberty Bell cracked its voice trying to wake up the 
inhabitants to the morning light of Freedom, and I know how as 
a boy I was one of the madding crowd that hoorayed and hustled 
at the Centennial Exposition in 1876, but now I can only recom- 
mend it as a quiet place for a young ladies' prayer-meeting or an 
undertakers' convention. 

At Carpenter's Hall our fathers "framed up" the Declaration, 
which was signed in Independence Hall two years later, but it 
remained for their sons to frame up a city graft hall with a 
thirty-six-foot statue of a Penn above it which cannot write a 
second volume of "Innocency with her Open Face." 

Well qualified to visit the Masonic Temple and disqualified 
to enter the Girard College, because I was a minister, I went to 
Christ Church, sat down in Washington's seat and had two Beers- 
for companions who took me to the Ross house. Bettsy was out 
and I went in to the little room where she lived and dressed 
plainly and covered herself with immortal glory by making the 



4 TO HELL AND BACK 

first American flag that leads the procession of the nations in 
the march of liberty, equality and fraternity. 

However, I found rare old Ben Franklin in his grave, tho 
his spirit still walks abroad as preacher, philosopher, statesman 
and inventor. He is the only man that ever wrote an almanac 
that is always up-to-date. On the Reading road to New York 
I read some of his good advice that we are to write things worth 
reading or do things worth writing about if we are not to be 
forgotten as soon as dead and rotten. 

NEW YORK 

BORTUNATELY we only had to stay two days in New 
York before sailing. At the Battery I prayed that 
Uncle Sam would hurry up and erect a sign "No 
Dumping Here" for the hordes of mental and moral 
perverts who want to come here and make this country as bad 
religiously, educationally, economically and politically as the 
countries they have just left. It's all right to make America a 
melting pot, but when the nations make it a slop jar we protest. 
Evelyn T. was tangoing at a roof garden where high society 
paid high prices to see high-skirted, low-necked dances. The 
place was warm and not much clothes were necessary except for 
modesty. Between the acts, as Chaplain of the Actor's Alliance, 
I gave my card to her manager and was received into her room. 
She had nothing much on worth speaking about. I told her Eden 
was not in the past, but in the future, wished her well and she 
promised to do the dances decently and in order. Hoping Evelyn 
would make good I said "Au revoir" and she wrote a bon voyage 
on her card and gave it to my son. 

My old school friend, "Nick," took us to Poe's cottage to see 
the picture of the raven painted on the outside and enter the 
rooms through which the bird "nevermore" is raving. Poor Poe, 
they starved him while living and after he is dead they use his 
house as a curiosity shop, and I wouldn't be surprised if I went 
there next year, to find the solemn black raven painted red and 
doing the splits for an ad. 



TO HELL AND BACK 



THE R. M. S. P. 



THE English packet R. M. S. P. stands for roast-beef, 
marmalade, squash and pudding and we had to stand 
for it from New York to Colon. The "Tagus" took 
us aboard at her dock and carried more gold in her 
safe than I had found on the banks of the river in Portugal by 
the same name. The boat was small, but that made it so much 
the easier to navigate to your bunk, lounge, bath, table and 
through the nearby door to the rail where you cast your bread 
upon the waters, hoping it never will return. There were fewer 
miles of deck promenade. Christ walked on the waves, and about 
the nearest some people come to following in his footsteps is to 
tramp the decks morning, noon and night from one port to an- 
other. It affords opportunities to bump into a fellow passenger, 
scrape up an acquaintance, or hear talk at close range and so learn 
whom to avoid or confide in at short notice. 

I like an Englishman for what he is and isn't — there is such a 
contrast between him an an American. We gamble with silver 
speech and his silence is unbroken from golden morn to eve. 
Outside of an asylum he seems at times to have the greatest 
capacity for unexpressed thought. He is brave and will enter 
the grand saloon with tuxedo, colored shirt, wool pants and tan 
shoes. He is sympathetic and never jostles you or steps on your 
foot without saying "Sorry." He is wise and through his mon- 
ocle looks at you like an owl breaking the silence with a solemn 
"Dontcher know?" He is patronizing — to the bar with its whis- 
ky and soda, and to his Yankee cousin. 

I love the English women, they are mentally and morally 
charming in their address by day and at night their dress shows 
their fine points and angularities. I am not surprised they have 
little love for our game of baseball, since they have few curves 
and little speed. 

Sea-air is powerful. It takes the paint off the boat and the 
veneer off the passengers. With change of clothes came change 
of conduct, and naked bosoms and truth were revealed. At Nep- 
tune's court the French are polite, the Americans brusk, the 
Germans sociable, but the English leave their manors and style 
behind. 

People who had little at home and always waited on them- 
selves, wanted a servant on board for everything. If they sel- 



(J TO HELL AND BACK 

dom or never bathed at home they demanded a daily bath at 
the hour most inconvenient for the steward. Those whose lit- 
erary aspirations were limited to the headlines of the Morning 
Ashpile or the Evening Sewer, grabbed the best books in the 
Library they couldn't read and wouldn't let anyone else get. 
They took their steamer chair and went here and there like a 
cat and dog to find the best place in the sun or shade. This 
done, they wandered all over the boat like a man without a chair 
or country, occupying other people's chairs and scowling at some 
poor mariner who had drifted into theirs. They had a lot of 
chairs but little charity. It is too bad the captain hasn't the 
hundred hands of Briareus, because everybody at the table wants 
to sit at his right or left, some to feel the honor, others to get 
some information of the trip, but most to listen to a lot of sailor 
yarns with which to knit up the raveled sleeve of care when they 
get home. 

Here I met a member of the Wilson Hegira on his profane 
pilgrimage to Cartagena. He was to have a good position for 
previous party service. He said he had been told to hurry and 
get there and not wait for official appointment, as possession was 
nine points of the law. He hurried all right, without his family 
and baggage, just made the boat and was studying Spanish ten 
hours a day, hoping within a week to be able to ask for a native 
drink in which to toast the party that believes, "To the victors 
belong the spoils," and was willing to spoil the Philippines or 
any other well regulated Republican dependency by turning a 
Republican out and putting a Democrat in. 

I wasn't seasick, but because I was writing a new book I got 
neuritis. The doctor prescribed rest, fruit, hot bath and a vile 
dose of medicine. I believe in the profit-sharing system, so I 
took the first two, gave my secretary the others and devoted 
myself to recuperation and reflection. 

The captain was a royal male, an athletic fellow and fine 
dresser, but like the captain in "Pinafore," who wore knee 
breeches because he didn't like pants, he went barefoot because 
he didn't want to wear shoes in rainy weather. This delighted 
the passengers, who contrasted the corns on his feet and the hairs 
on his calves with the gold lace and buttons on his pants. 

The second officer was first class, a good looker and talker. 
He spoke of Spain, San Salvador, Columbus and the Southern 



TO HELL AND BACK 7 

Cross, but I thought of the other cross Chris, gave the natives 
and which many of their descendants believe was a double cross, 
making them cross ever since. 

The first officer was gallant to the last, and head assistant in 
landing two female visitors who were carried off at Jamaica in 
spite of calls and bells. The captain signalled a row-boat, it came, 
and as the women went down the accommodation ladder the first 
officer said, "Madam, secure your skirts." However, she grasped 
her hat with both hands and replied, "O dat's all right," thus 
proving the color-line makes no difference in love of a bonnet and 
that like her white Northern city sisters on a rainy day her 
uppermost thought was to show her nethermost limbs. 

Passengers were either first or third class. On the lower 
deck there was a little Hindu girl with black, sleek hair, silver 
necklaces, anklets and bracelets and a bright dress not as bright 
as her black eyes, which like many another woman's eyes had 
brought ruin. She had opthalmia and was not allowed to land 
at New York to join her husband, and so the poor little sixteen- 
year-old bride was going back to her father's house she never 
should have left. 

Next in importance to soda and whisky on an English boat 
are Bibles and prayer-books for the Sunday service, and there 
is a service even if the captain has to read it. But when you 
sail for South America you leave God, the Bible as well as native 
land, and the Satan you are expected to bid "Get behind" comes 
to the front and leads the way. 

On Sunday I am always on deck and crazy to preach as the 
hearers are after I get through. But when I saw an Episcopal 
clergyman on board I knew I would have to bear my cross and 
listen. Like Barkis, he was "willin'," but wasn't asked to 
officiate. 

Appearances are deceitful, often a black skin covers a white 
heart. Our negro roustabouts after their work, washed, shaved, 
sat or lay around on deck with an English hymn-book, singing 
all the songs from cover to cover. One read and lined it, 
another accompanied him with a musical humming drone and 
all the others joined in the chorus. If the humble are to be 
exalted the high God had more regard for these lowly worship- 
pers than for us. It was a sin and a shame. Feeling the need of 
apology or explanation to two ministers and two missionaries for 



g TO HELL AND BACK 

110 white Sunday exercises the captain explained that no boat 
sailing south dared have a service, for there were so many Chris- 
tian sects represented that they might start something worse than 
the tempest Jonah figured in. 

Perhaps to drown his conscience he asked a song-bird to 
clear her throat with a glass of wine with him on the bridge. 
Either it was flat or there was too much high sea, for her dress 
was stained with the juice, and like Lady Macbeth she wanted 
to get the damned spot out. 

I was "on to Richmond," for the Reverend R told me 

I had missed it by turning in so early. When one of the ladies 
sang, all the men went out to drink beer and he didn't know 
what song would have been strong enough to get whisky. I 
replied, ''Coming Through the Rye," and though he was an Eng- 
lishman, he saw the joke and laughed then and there instead of 
next day. 

You can't get away from death, taxes and the ship-band. The 
English are not great musicians, but their bugle sounds good 
before meals three times a day. The band generally blows when 
Aeolus doesn't, and when they are not busy making beds or wash- 
ing dishes they blow inspiring strains or strain and blow up a 
storm of disapproval. 

Our boat broke the glassy sea into little waves and it was 
pleasant to compare the pond with the times when Neptune kicks 
against the slops thrown over the rail and makes the boat toss 
like a shingle in the Niagara rapids. 

It is the same old salt sea in size, smell and swell by sunrise 
and sunset which writers have wrung tortures from words to 
describe and painters have grown blue or green to represent. 

The old traveler gets tired of the bait which is offered in 
pulling the money out of his pocket and landing him on a for- 
eign shore. Glowing descriptions of far-off seas and lands, sun, 
moon, stars, clouds and climes may do for some young sucker, 
but not a game old fish. There's millions in it for the company 
that will offer something like this ; a ship whose funnels, boat 
spars and awning won't always be in the way and obstruct the 
best views ; deck-washings not so early in the morning and 
accompanied by fewer oaths ; no seasickness ; no death-dealing 
smells from hold or kitchen; no cockroaches served with meals 
or bugs with beds ; no amateur benefit concerts ; no tips for favors 



TO HELL AND BACK 



not received; no pothouse bands; no moonstruck spooners or 
promenaders permitted on deck ; no lying testimonials at the close 
of the voyage or presents to officers who are already overpaid for 
doing less than their duty. 



SAN SALVADOR 



AT sunset we sighted San Salvador with its lighthouse 
i and old wreck outlined against the sky. I tried to 
imagine how Columbus felt when standing on the deck 
of the Santa Maria he saw a light, and then the land, 
said "Holy Smoke," and taking out his memorandum pad wrote, 
"October 12, 1492. The world is mine. I have discovered it and 
will give it to my church and sovereign in the Old World if we 
can kill the natives and get away with the booty before they nail 
us in our coffins." 

San Salvador isn't very large, exports fruit and salt, has a 
black population, was known for its horses, but is famous for 
its footprints on the sands of time which Chris, left. On the 
height above the bay some Chicago admirers have heralded the 
new world's discovery on a stone shaft. 

Christopher Columbus, the Italian, never saw the day in 1492 
that he discovered America or set foot on the mainland. What 
he sighted and touched was the little island of Watlings, one of 
the Bahamas. 

Leif Ericson, the Norwegian, about the year 1000 discovered 
the northeast coast of America, wintered there, and called it 
Vinland. 

As a matter of history it is known that five hundred years 
before Columbus there were Norse colonies in Greenland and 
further south on the continent which at the beginning of the 
Sixteenth Century had been utterly forgotten. 

CUBA 



THE devil let up long enough on my fiddle-string nerve, 
where he had played an infernal tune, for me to stretch 
my legs and get off in a little steam launch and touch 
at Antilla. I had seen Amber, Pompeii, Memphis, 
Ephesus and a few other places, but Antilla has it on them all, 
for while they were buried, it was dead and didn't know it. The 
objects of interest are a dock, not dry, but wet with Bordeaux 



10 TO HELL AND BACK 

wine ; a double-deck lighter liable to capsize ; a corner hotel with 
ancient history newspapers; a long street with stores and bars; 
a stand of sugar-cane and cocoanut; a railroad station; one 
yellow dog and a blind-eyed nigger. The name Ant Hilla sug- 
gests the size of the town, but not the activity of the people. 

I had been all over Cuba, and was in Havana the day our 
flag was lowered and theirs raised. What I feared had come 
true. Their morals went down and not up when we gave them a 
liberty they mistook for license. 

"Pure Havana" refers to the tobacco and not the city. It is 
a place of cigars, cigarets, convents, churches, cafes, carousals 
and cockfighting. I found dirty books and pictures sold on the 
streets, and the saloons, dives, dance halls and picture shows 
were literally "rotten." But what can you expect when Velasquez 
settled it in 1515 and it has been unsettled ever since by riot, 
burned by pirates and sacked by English and Dutch? 

At Antilla I met an Amherst professor who had studied social 
conditions in Cuba and recently I received a long letter from 
him — I quote several suggestive sentences: 

"One finds many oddities in these countries, especially touch- 
ing the native life as it is found here; their manners, customs 
and queer beliefs. 

"I found that 95 per cent of the people in South and Cen- 
tral America were either atheists or free thinkers, or, it would 
really be better, and nearer the truth, to say that they do not 
think on religious matters at all nor can the majority of them be 
gotten to talk about the matter in any way. 

"They have been led, cajoled and deceived by the priesthood, 
until all religions and religious teachers are measured by the 
standard that has been set by these and maintained for many 
centuries. This has largely influenced the social and family life, 
reduced their faith in humanity to the minimum and in their 
minds the only one who can safely be trusted is the one who is 
watched at the same time. 

"Very few are ever under any circumstances welcome into 
the homes of other people, and the result is very little visiting 
done except by those who have gone to the States or elsewhere 
to learn the valuable lesson of social contact with their fellow 
beings. This has resulted in the circumscribing of their vocab- 



TO HELL AND BACK H 

ulary, and the result is that they converse about the most com- 
monplace things only. 

"Men and women are kept as far apart as possible, and must 
get acquainted after marriage, which in many cases results in 
their estrangement and the hunting of concubines for the man, 
which is very common in all these countries." 

"Remember the Maine?" Sure, because it loomed just out 
of my porthole window, with its skeleton fingers raised to heaven 
for justice. The prayer has been answered for the living and 
the dead. 

Uncle Sam cleaned up Havana, for she was filthy with her 
fifty fountains, but the sow has returned to her wallowing in the 
mire. She has a Moro castle, a Malacon promenade, a Tacon 
theatre, a Jail Alai ball game, but she longs for bullfights and 
savage pleasures. Like the Mexicans and Latin-Americans, 
Cubans are lazy when not planning deviltry. They need a brass 
knuckle to put them down or a steel spur to keep them in con- 
trol. "Cuba Libre." 



AN ENGLISH EDEN, 



WE approached Jamaica during a thunderstorm that gave 
a wonderful effect on land and sea. Nearing Old Port 
Royal, the pirates' Babylon, a place of fire, plague, 
slavery, battle and murder, we recalled its Seventeenth 
Century buccaneers whom an earthquake swept into the sea. 
Writers tell how you can see the ruins and hear the cathedral 
bells on a fair day, but all I could find around here were the 
wrecks of two German steamships. 

There is a dangerous coral reef, but we made a safe voyage 
and landed just in time for a tropical sunset with pink and blue 
sky which outlined the feathery palms of the city. A walk to 
the Myrtle Hotel with its fruits and flowers was intoxicating, 
and made us feel this must have been the original Lotus Eaters' 
Club. 

Kingston is a quaint old quaker city with quakes for break- 
fast and hurricanes in season, but all danger was forgotten amid 
our delightful surroundings. You see the business life of a city 
by day, but its real home life by night. I took a street car that 
ran through the native quarter. The lights in the huts showed 
some preparing food on charcoal fires and everybody lazy but 



12 TO HELL AND BACK 

happy. As we rode we passed many people carrying bundles on 
their heads and at the end of the line went into a shop kept by a 
Chinaman and bought some big buns and chocolates, being 
warned by the natives that John was charging us too much. But 
I had been to China, mixed with John in California and trusted 
him more than his jealous rivals and detractors. 

This was the only bun, and solid, but there were others who 
had a liquid bun. It was made of rum and fizz, flavored with 
limes and stirred with a swizel stick. This stick exerts a scep- 
tered sway over whites and blacks. It is seductive and intoxi- 
cating, but beware lest you feel the club of the policeman as you 
sneak home a back way leaning on a walking stick. 

An appropriate coat of arms for Jamaica would be some gin- 
ger root, for there is a hot time in the old town when it comes 
to climate, drinks, dances and morals. That night on the way 
to the ship we stopped to watch the negro men and women carry 
coal on their heads to the ship. The night, the coal and their 
faces were black, but their eyes flashed when they received light 
wages for heavy work. After their work they were willing, for 
a shilling, to give a weird dance, with much grace and not many 
clothes, that would make New York society envious. 

Next morning in walking around I stumbled over some of 
the same earthquake bricks I had stumbled over on a former 
visit. I wouldn't be in a hurry either to rebuild if after six days 
of hard work the seventh came with a cyclone and earthquake 
and knocked the whole thing down again. 

We three were not despondent, but drove to the Hope Gar- 
dens in the early fresh and fragrant morning. Our little Hindu 
guide knew the names of all the different trees and flowers, but 
didn't know the American flag. I gave him a tip and a free 
lecture on America, which will make him know the flag the next 
time he sees it. 

Cooley town was hot and goldsmiths were hammering out 
bracelets for Hindu arms and legs and we got some good pictures 
of children who didn't wear even a toe ring. 

The English are improving the town. Since I was here they 
have cut down the magnificent Ceiba tree, at the Half Way 
house, with its royal height, majestic shade and surface roots 
where the tired rested, and put in its place a little clock tower 
and bust to the memory of Edward the Seventh. Shades of the 



TO HELL AND BACK 13 

departed ! It wasn't necessary to set up a clock to tell us Edward 
had a good time. The old monarch tree better illustrated the 
shelter and security Edward offered all his subjects. 

The famous Jamaica ginger has not been taken in large doses 
by the natives, for they are lazy. Many of them are leprous and 
illegitimate, but they carry their burdens on their heads and not 
in their hearts, smile like Nature around them and are better 
under English rule than self-government. 

If you want history run out to Spanish town, the old capital 
whose old government buildings are the color of pink tights; 
wander through the former Romanist now Anglican cathedral 
and read the slab eiptaphs of some of Jamaica's illustrious cut- 
throats ; if you like scenery, drive out to Bog Walk with palms, 
orchids, and native wood for policeman's clubs; if you want 
tropical trees, go to Castelton Garden, and if you are hungry 
and want to get outside of a bunch of bananas, run over to Port 
Antonio, where blue sky, Blue Mountains and blue Caribbean, 
according to similia similibus curantur, will rid you of your blue 
devils. 

Jamaica, the one-time pirates' paradise, has become a tourists' 
playground; the buccaneer has given way to the botanist; its 
history reads like a dime-novel. Morgan and his men were 
regarded as the most ungodly men on the face of the earth. He 
left no collections for a museum, as other members of the Mor- 
gan family have, but left a name to point a moral and adorn a 
tale. 



A WET TOWN 



COLON is well named. It's a question whether anyone 
wants to stop here for any period of time unless he is 
in a state of coma when he would make a point of 
exclamation to get out. 
I knew it as Aspinwall in my school days when my chum's 
father, who was a sea-captain, tall as a mast, stormy as the sea, 
with red face, hair tied in pigtails and a voice like thunder, came 
home loaded with liquors, gems, fabrics, parrots and bags of 
cocoa. He spun enough yarns to clothe us all with wool suits and 
I had big pockets in mine which I filled with delicious cocoa 
beans. Thus early was my love for chocolate developed, not only 
in liquid form, but in those lumps of sweetness which tempt one 



14 TO HELL AND BACK 

at sixty cents a pound for his sweetheart three times a week. 

Colon's enchantment is in the distance. On landing you find 
it a wet town, with fire and rain-water. The annual rainfall is 
140 inches, but the barrels of booze have never been counted. 
The rain stopped long enough for us to paddle to the new Wash- 
ington Hotel, where instead of liquor we got a sticker for the 
trunk. 

It was half an hour before train time and that was fifteen 
minutes more than necessary to see this town, though our horse 
and driver were slow and our wheels got interlocked with another 
team and it took five minutes and fifty oaths to extricate them. 

Uncle Sam is a good housekeeper, and soap, sewers and sani- 
tation follow the flag. He had worked a miracle, since I had been 
here, of healing and health on this open sore. Miss Mosquito, 
with yellow fever charm, cut a wide dead swath in all classes of 
society, but with some other deadly members of the sex she has 
been practically driven out or made harmless. Our medical 
heroes achieved as great victories on the Isthmus as others of 
mechanical and military renown. 

Colon is the short for Columbus. We expected to find a 
statue of him, but were surprised to find how true it was to life. 
The sculptor had him hugging an Indian girl, just as in his statue 
in Genoa his right hand rests lovingly on the left shoulder of a 
fair Italian dame. The people who make him a saint and f ollow 
him as the embodiment of knightly chivalry should remember he 
was gay with the girls, that he deserted his wife and family and 
was always on the lookout to discover new lands and land a new 
sweetheart in every port. 

THE BIG DITCH 



WE ran along the Big Ditch and saw where the French 
had buried their men, money and morals. The canal is 
a chestnut in song and story. It has been a Godsend 
to the newspapers, magazine writers and lecturers who 
were running dry of material. There have been enough pipes of 
hot air in and out of Congress to blow up the Gatun Dam ; tons 
of description to fill the Culebra cut ; and barrels of money poured 
in to break the Spillway. 

Milton sings of the gates of Paradise and Siloa's brook. I 



TO HELL AND BACK 15 

sing the praises of Uncle Sam's canal and the Gatun gates which 
open a paradise to the ships of the world. 

It was muggy and muddy and after I had walked around the 
works for an hour I came back with an O. K. on all that had 
been spent and done in the last ten years. 

I always did approve of the work of the Y. M. C. A., and 
when in the shade of an old palm tree I sat down before a dish 
of ice cream and half an apple pie I knew why the men had been 
willing to leave their happy homes and sweethearts to slave and 
sweat in the damp tropics. 

If F. stood for French failure, U. S. stood for unprecedented 
success, and so on the Bible grounds of coveting earnestly the 
best gifts, England seemed dissatisfied with her Suez canal and 
wanted ours. The locks we thought secure have been picked. 
Our professor President took up his pen and wrote a vote of 
thanks for the thief instead of picking up Teddy's big stick and 
smashing John Bull's hat over his eyes. 

The train took us by sick swamps, dying jungles, and buried 
stations to Panama and during the run a canal attache, whose 
breath was strong as his body, told me about accidents, lives lost, 
luxuries and loafing privileges that would be hot stuff for the 
yellow press. 

PANAMA NEW AND OLD 



PANAMA is a magic word which means a hat, a canal, a 
: city in particular or pandemonium in general. C. C. 
landed here in 1502 and made it possible for every lit- 
erary, political, commercial and religious fakir since to 
dump his wares. Every devil on his way to the farther south 
inferno manages to stop here. 

The town was and is a robbers' roost. The fathers are dead 
but left many descendants, who soak you fifteen cents not for a 
glass of whisky, but for a small glass of warm gingerale, and at 
the Tivoli Hotel charge a golden eagle a day for board, recalling 
the scripture, "Riches take to themselves wings and fly away." 

x The town is wide open, the only things I saw barred were the 
windows of the stores and houses which were a kind of safe- 
guard to keep the inmates from attacking the traveling public. 
Over the old sea walls human sharks have come into the city 
stores and hotels, 



16 TO HELL AND BACK 

We autoed out to Old Panama, the former market for Peru's 
gold and silver. Did you ever see a field of wheat after the 
grasshoppers had gone through it? That's about the way- 
Morgan left this town looking, for he tore down the walls, 
grabbed the gold and carried the people away in chains. It was 
thought he hid some of the gold he couldn't carry off and people 
have been digging for it ever since. So far the only successful 
prospector seems to be the chauffeur and hack driver who make 
you dig up your good money for bad service. I speak from 
experience, because I hired the auto by the hour and paid 
extra for the time required to fix his bursted tire. But it was 
worth it. We pay for art and I have Memory's picture of the 
old cathedral with its broken tower, vine-clad windows and walls, 
the tropical jungle around it and the surf -covered rocks nearby. 

New Panama has churches to burn incense and incenses mem- 
bers to burn churches. Balboa's quest for the Temple of Gold is 
realized by the church in her lotteries among the laity. The 
ground floor of the bishop's palace is given over to the sale of 
lottery tickets that makes the old money changing in the temple 
of Jerusalem a godly performance in comparison. 

Everybody rich and poor, young and old, is doing the lottery 
and being done by it, and I am glad to know that as every dog 
has its day this godly grab-bag is soon to be forced to quit. 

Sunday night here was like Saturday night in New Orleans. 
Everybody was out for a good time. Feeling the need of some 
city mission work I was glad to meet members of the Salvation 
Army singing "Onward, Christian Soldier," and trying to enlist 
new followers. Off came my hat with a God bless you and a 
piece of money, for they lift up the fallen the world over. The 
place to see and be seen was the Plaza where the band played. 
If music is the food of love there was a big banquet, for eyes 
feasted on beauty and all went merry with thought of prospective 
marriage bells. 

Panama is a free port, all nations are represented, so I went 
to the International hotel. Waking early I got up, walked around 
the porch and looked in the open screens before the sons and 
daughters of men were up. Suddenly the sun rose in the West 
out on the Pacific. Perhaps I was only half awake, but that's 
the way it looked to me. But the sun hadn't got out on the 



TO HELL AND BACK 17 

wrong side of the ocean-bed, because the bay of Panama sweep- 
ing around the city looks like the ocean. 

If the tenderfoot expects to cover any ground he must "get 
there" early in the morning. So we shopped, and since this is a 
free-for-all port where all nations have their bazaars, you can 
get anything you pay for from a Panama hat, from Ecuador, to 
a cigar from everywhere. The word "Panama" means fish, but 
I didn't bite. 

Uncle Sam's spade and broom have changed and cleaned 
many of the streets and houses, but some things remain which 
make you think you are in Spain. There are houses whose upper 
stories lean so far over the street that you find it easy to flirt 
with a fan or fight with your fist. At the postofnce I grew hot 
and sticky addressing fifty postal cards and grew hotter and 
stickier when the girl postoffice clerk handed me a can of paste 
and a big brush to stick the glueless stamps. 

People go to church for various reasons. I went to the Cathe- 
dral to see how old and tall and shiny it was and then to a little 
Methodist church to learn how it conducted a day school. In 
the open doorway stood an Uncle Tom-looking teacher. He saw 
my flag, invited me in, asked me to talk to the children and trans- 
lated what I said about our flag and what its colors stood for. 
Missions pay. The hope of Central and South America is the 
teaching of an open Bible and history to the rising generation. 

Balboa is a little town at the Pacific entrance of the Canal 
named after a big discoverer, who, standing tip-toe on the high- 
est peak, saw a body of water which he called the South sea and 
took possession of every dirty shore it washed for the kings of 
Castile. With so much water and soap he made a clean job of 
it, but the Virgin didn't reward him, for on his return to Santa 
Maria he found another in favor who told him to go way back 
and explore the sea he had discovered. While carrying material 
for his ships across the Isthmus he was arrested on a trumped 
up charge of treason and executed. 

A HOUSE BOAT 
NDER a sizzling sun our walk to the dock seemed like 
the whole of the West Coast, and on board and ready 
to start we found ourselves held up by a belated Wash- 
ington official who hadn't forgotten how to use "influ- 
ence" and still work a holdup on sea as well as on land. 




15 TO HELL AND BACK 

Steaming out of the harbor, we admired the entrance to the 
Canal, the new lighthouse and the islands which are to be forti- 
fied, and wandered over the "Guatemala," the ark in which we 
were to float. Our rooms, like those of a Mississippi river-boat, 
opened on deck. This was fortunate, for you could stand out on 
deck and get fresh air when you packed and unpacked your 
trunk. It was hard to find things and it was every man for him- 
self and the devil for the hindmost. The trunks were in the 
wrong rooms and the wrong things were in the trunks. "L" lost 
his legs in a pair of my big white duck pants and I tried to get 
his shirt over my neck, wondering why I had grown so big and 
it had shrunk so much. Mrs. "M" was appealed to, but had 
troubles of her own and fell down in the heat in a hysterical fit. 
Without a pilot I steered for the bar and sailed back with cool 
lemonade and other soothing drinks, which did much to reduce 
our hot temper and temperature. 

Their officers were nice in spite of the fact that they had 
carried the Boston Chamber of Commerce, high rollers even on a 
smooth sea, who had left the trail of their dissipation all over 
South America, making the natives twofold more the children of 
hell than they were before. 

They went to investigate its mental and moral conditions, and 
had they done something but drink champagne by day and de- 
bauch by night, they could have brought home a story of private 
and public immorality that would have rivaled the moral degra- 
dation of the Philippines and given our government a report as 
awful as "Document 190." 

Noah had his ark and animals, and like him, after being 
rocked in the cradle of the deep, I was waked from pleasant 
dreams, not by a bugler, but the crow of a rooster, the grunt of 
a pig, the bleat of a sheep and the bellow of a bull. I started 
up as if I were a boy again on the farm and called early to do 
the chores. My next thought was that the captain had sailed 
near enough to somebody's farm to flirt with the milkmaid. I 
dressed and went out to investigate, found we were not in sight 
of land and that the noise proceeded from the interior of the 
boat like the sounds from the belly of the Trojan horse. On 
this sea, you see, there is no cold storage. Sailors and passen- 
gers must have meat to keep up their courage for what may 
happen. So you go down and tell the chicken what kind of an 



TO HELL AND BACK 19 

egg you want for breakfast and look over the cattle to see what 
kind of chop or steak you will have for dinner. I didn't have 
to land to see a bullfight for there was one on deck one morning 
when a poor brute, which had received the best of friendly care 
and food, was dragged out, pulled down to a ring and struck; 
groaning, staggering, he drew his feet under him and gave up 
the ghost. The young butcher actor had planned this bloody 
tragedy for my special benefit, but it was a sorry spectacle on an 
empty stomach, and the photo of me bending over the carcass 
suggests anything but a "bully time." 

CLOSED ECUADOR 



ECUADOR'S door is shut to American tourists, for Uncle 
Sam has nailed a yellow fever sign on it. If you want 
to break through and cross this deadline of the Equator 
from which the country is named, you must take your 
chance on a Chilean boat. 

The approach to Guayaquil is a reproach, slimy, swampy and 
sickly. There is something in a name. This town can kill a guy 
or an artist, for it was so nasty that Nast, our great cartoonist, 
who was consul here, sickened and died. There seems to be 
everything to drink but good water, with the result that yellow 
fever and delirium tremens keep the grave diggers busy. The 
city is laid out on the usual plan of a Square with a big cathedral 
though the church hates the Masons. The law has forced big- 
otry to greater tolerance. Protestant missionaries and Bibles 
have come to show that the less a people are under any church 
control the greater their intelligence and prosperity ; that if two- 
thirds of the days of the year are not celebrated as feast and fast 
days there will be less of illiteracy, illegitimacy and those things 
that suggest the Middle Ages. 

One may avoid the mosquito by going to Quito, the quaint 
sleepy capital whose inhabitants are being electrified by lights and 
cars. The Panama Canal means to them more trade and tourists 
if they will clean up the filthy Indians who are two-thirds of the 
country's population, shut up the jangling bells and juggling 
clerics and put up some good hotels and a government that will 
last forty-eight hours. 

Ecuador is cursed with filth, fever, quakes, ignorance, big- 
otry and bastardy. Outside of this it is a fine country. 



20 TO HELL AND BACK 

Perhaps you can't expect much more where Mother Nature 
breaks out with volcanic eruption or shakes with ague, has a high 
temperature by day and chills by night. 

Quito has a hospital, leper-retreat, penitentiary and lunatic 
asylum which are well patronized. If further accommodations 
are needed when the crazy tourist comes, some of the unneces- 
sary monasteries and religious buildings could be devoted to prac- 
tical saving influence. 

The fat man who finds walking and breathing hard in this 
altitude may board a trolley car, and timid females who are 
afraid to go out in the dark will find something brighter than 
narrow streets lighted with candles placed in front of shrines at 
the street corners. 

Ecuador does a big revolution business on the small capital 
of a few regular soldiers and a navy fleet of two ships. 

She raises more ivory nuts than any country in the world. I 
don't doubt it, when I read its history, see its illiteracy and think 
of the solid ivory which is trying to manage its affairs. 

A ship officer showed me an ivory nut souvenir which had 
been cut in such a way as to inclose a full set of altar utensils. 
But I was more familiar with it in the form of suspender buttons 
just as others are with it in poker chips and cane handles. 

Speaking of nut-heads reminds me of the shrunken head 
trophies which head-hunters sell as souvenirs in the interior of 
Ecuador and of a specimen I later saw in La Paz. The process 
is to get your man, cut off his head, skin it from neck to scalp, 
dry it with red hot stones until it shrinks to about a fourth of its 
size, retaining the hair, the brows, the nose, the eyes, the lips as 
natural as life and twice as hideous. It is a real death's head 
that makes an Egyptian mummy, a catacomb skull and funeral 
corpse look life-like and lovable in comparison. 

You may not know it, but Peruvian bark, Panama hats, rub- 
ber, coffee and chocolate come from Ecuador. She is a good 
Samaritan to us. What would we do if she didn't put a Panama 
hat on our head, some chocolate in our mouth, Peruvian bark in 
our stomach and some buttons on our pants ? 





1 i ' i.- ■ /."":■# * : -'- 



TO HELL AND BACK 21 



A DRY TOWN 



SOON after we crossed the Equator our white suits were 
folded like the tents of the Arabs and put away. A 
clouded sun overhead and the Humboldt current un- 
derneath made it feel more like winter than summer. 

At Payta I put my foot on South American soil for the first 
time and if Pizarro had landed here I think he would have cast 
a lingering look behind and returned. 

No sooner had we alighted from our lighter, for all boats 
must anchor off this stern and rock-bound coast, than officials 
stepped up in their glad-rags to welcome us. I showed an Amer- 
ican flag and a letter with a big seal which made them think I 
was the minister, and they honored me by taking me to jail, 
hotel and market. 

There isn't much for the tourist, and that is more smell than 
sight, in spite of the salt sea before and a sandy desert around. 
The people have a lot of sand, but they are lazy, for the sand 
man works in the day as well as the night. The bamboo houses 
look like baskets of sand. Payta is the place where a "foolish 
man" may build his house on the sand with no fear that the 
rain will descend or the floods come, because it never rains here. 

Above the town on a bluff is a big cross either built as a 
beacon for ships, a shrine of devotion or a symbol to drive away 
the devil, although you can never cross or bluff him that way. 

I went in the little church which the janitor was dusting. The 
art was atrocious, the saints looked very sorry, but I worshipped 
in there by giving a lame native beggar some money and turning 
down an English tramp who in a weak voice asked me for a 
shilling with a strong breath. 

There were barefooted women carrying baskets of fish and 
melons, goats following with a hungry air of "give me some," 
and old men tramping along with heavy bundles of wood on 
their backs. Cook has no office here, but the hotel office adver- 
tises good cooking and drink. Next to the sand and hotel bars 
the bars of the jail were of interest. I walked around to get a 
picture while the guard watched me. Then I bravely went up to 
the man with a gun, handed him a general letter of introduction 
from Hon. John Barrett and he let me in to see the men and 
women in prison, glaring through the little bars like animals in 



22 TO HELL AND BACK 

a cage, but what was better, let me out when I wanted to go. 

Sewers, public comfort stations and private sanitary con- 
veniences are unknown and what I took to be a bath house with 
a board walk running out in the water was a public comfort sta- 
tion in full view of sea and city. However, judged by the prac- 
tice of some of the natives, the said places of shed architecture 
are more for ornament than use. 

To miss your boat and be marooned at this port would be a 
dire calamity and make suicide justifiable, so we hurried to the 
wharf, called our boatmen and were rowed over to the ship. 

By the gang there were some pretty native girls, with hair 
well combed and braided with flowers, sitting in boats selling 
food and fruit to the men unloading the cargo. 

Native women are not allowed on shipboard because they 
steal all they can lay their hands on. Ship officers said that all 
the houses in Payta was furnished by the Royal Mail Steamers. 
I saw a woman in a Mother Hubbard take a bag, put some money 
in it and hand it to a roustabout. He gave in return a table cloth 
and she hid it under her dress and a little later took a look at it, 
brought it back and said in substance, "What do I want with a 
table cloth?" and exchanged it for a shawl. I knew it didn't 
belong to us, for we paid an extra dollar to keep our doors 
locked. Of course it is wrong to steal, but one can hardly blame 
a woman here for stealing anything to make her life easier and 
brighter. 

STRAW LIDS 



AT Payta you pay to cover your pate. Copper-colored 
Indians boarded the boat with a tower of hats on 
their heads. A hat is one of the few souvenirs you 
get along with disease and fever. They say some of 
the hats are made of moonbeams. I don't doubt it, for it is hot, 
the natives are lazy and sleep when the sun shines, and I never 
saw them work, so it must be at night. The cost of the hat 
shows the profit is honored in its own country. The natives 
know you want a hat and the more you want it the more they 
charge. The first hat sold for thirty dollars gold. I bought 
three for less than that for friends and had to make my money 
talk, for I couldn't speak Spanish. This is the way I did it. I 
held the money in one hand and the hat in the other. The 
Indian shrugged his shoulders, I pulled back the money and 



TO HELL AND BACK 23 

pushed the hat hard against his breast. This had the desired 
effect and I got it at my own price. 

A man is generally as proud of his Panama as a woman of 
her Easter bonnet, for it costs as much if it is a good one. I 
thought I wanted a hat until I saw how every dirty native man, 
woman and child wore one all the time. Proof that it doesn't 
rain here is seen in the undisturbed dust which settles on their 
hats as sand on a hill. They look like the same style and shade 
since Pizarro's time. I wondered if he managed to pick up a hat 
somewhere and whether he looked as grand as Napoleon, Wash- 
ington and William Penn in their hats ? Even if so, I'm sure he 
wasn't as brimful of good ideas. 

The rich man whose head swells with the thought of his 
expensive straw would do well to visit Payta and see a lousy 
beggar wearing a straw hat that makes his look like a paste- 
board box in an ash-barrel. If Payta- tires of her name, from the 
number of hats sold, she might change it to Hatteras and call 
her bishop, Hatto. 

A ROCKY TIME 

TIME writes few wrinkles on the Pacific's azure brow, 
but has placed many "moles" on it. Three of a kind 
are found at Eten, Pacasmayo and Salaverry. The sea 
is so rough and the shore so rocky that boats can't 
dock. So a pier is run out several thousand feet and you and 
your luggage are hoisted up by a crane; then you are shoved 
along to a low zinc-roofed depot where you can go to the little 
villages in the Andean foothills, if you wish, where, instead of 
the coast sand, melted snow makes life possible. 

At Eten the swell was so big we couldn't land our passengers. 
They had to get off our boat into a rowboat which took them to 
an anchored freight boat. A big sack was lowered, the passen- 
gers were put in it, and as the vessel rolled they were slammed 
against its side. There we left them to stay till the mad sea was 
pacified and the freighter, like Jonah's ship, could throw them 
out on land. 

Pacasmayo has no harbor or craft, but if you can ever land 
you can find plenty of handicraft, priestcraft and witchcraft 
among the Indians. 

Salaverry could well be called Spit-head from the way the 



24 TO HELL ANL BACK 

surf spumed against the mole and rocks. The Pacific was tem- 
pest-tossed this Sunday with no Galilean pilot to say, "Peace, be 
still." We had no Lord's Day service, but were humble and 
prayerful before the Lord lest our anchor chain snap and we 
sea-sick passengers be cast helplessly adrift. Cargoes and stom- 
achs were unloaded. Later some passengers came over this howl- 
ing, hissing, hell water and were hoisted in a chair to our deck. 
A good looking well-dressed fat senora was held up to be lifted 
up by two thin men whose hands were full. She was a poor 
boarder, but thanked them with words and her breakfast. There 
was a sun-burned, half-famished man and boy who had traveled 
for two weeks across the desert with nothing much to eat but 
parched corn kernels or cover them at night but the blanket of 
the sky. Finally we rolled away and the ship kept rolling until 
I had to keep pillows on both sides of me to keep from falling 
out of my bunk and banging around like Victor Hugo's cannon. 

FRAGRANT ISLANDS 



OUR ship's sister went down into the depths near here 
about six years ago and took one man with her. I am 
not surprised that he went, for the shore is a desert, 
the sea a sailless dreary deep, clouds hide the sun, the 
Antarctic, unlike the electric current, cools your blood and the 
fragrance of the Guano Islands is wafted to your nose like the 
odor of a soap factory or your neighbor's unemptied garbage can. 

You may think, gentle reader, that you know what a Guano 
Island is when you read its definition in the dictionary, but this 
is a mistake. It must be smelt to be appreciated. 

What poet can describe sailing o'er a sea which looks like the 
wash water of the Augean Stables and among isles whose impure 
breezes would choke off his inspiration at the first line? 

One starlit night as we were walking the deck I imagined my 
breath was feverish, that the cook in his kitchen laboratory was 
inventing some new combination of garlic and onions, that the 
washroom steward had been careless in cleaning up or that like 
the Ancient Mariner we were sailing over a rotting sea with a 
cargo of corpses. But it was none of these things. Simply the 
Guano Islands, as the officer assured me, only this and nothing 
more. 

It never rains alono- this coast but there are snow storms in 



TO HELL AND BACK 25 

the Andes, and I thought a blizzard had struck us when a vast 
cloud of birds swept over our bow and left a white drift on the 
deck. 

Aristophanes tells of a bird-city in the sky. It may be that 
the bottom fell out and formed the Chincha Islands. St. Fran- 
cis preached a sermon to the birds, but I am afraid these birds 
never heard it, for they look and act as if their only knowledge 
of Scripture and the Creator was the profanity of the sailors who 
drove them away from their nesting and resting place and made 
their excrement an increment of wealth by shipping it over the 
world as soil fertilizer. Guano is as good as gold. These depos- 
its made Peru's savings bank account. But riches fly away. 
Chile broke in and grabbed the wealth and when brought up 
before the bar of judgment said she didn't steal it, only just took 
what was necessary to wipe out an insult and defend herself in 
future. 

The old Peruvians knew that Guano was great stuff long 
before the Spanish smugglers landed on their shores and them, 
or Humboldt had carried a chunk of it to Europe and proved 
that while in odor it was as orthodox as good Limburger cheese, 
one ton possessed enough nitrogen to put 33 tons of farm manure 
to flight. 

The Hindu worships animal refuse and if the source of his 
inspiration failed he could make a pious pilgrimage to these 
islands where porpoise, fish, gulls, penguins, seals and birds have 
erected shrines, miles long and hundreds of feet high, where 
the waves have been the music, the wind the prayers, the sun the 
baptism and the incense the awful smell. 

The ships that touch at these islands are not excursion boats 
of tourist parties, but small, dirty looking craft that come for 
business. These Guano mines have practically been exhausted 
and that must be the condition of the sailors who dig in them 
unless they have lost all sense of smell. 

There are many isles of the blest in this world where the 
traveler and honeymoon couple may spend sweet days and nights, 
but the Chinchas are not that kind. From what I have seen and 
smelt I can only recommend them to the farmer and agricultural 
student as an experimenting station. 



26 TO HELL AND BACK 



FIRST LESSONS IN SPANISH, 



THE "Quaker Girl," played on the phonograph the night 
before we landed at Callao, suggested the terra mota 
which had shaken the city like a dice box, after which a 
tidal wave swept away the people with their filth and 
fever. 'Twas on such an occasion that the island of San Lorenzo 
which protects the harbor rose up like Venus from the sea. All 
the buried cities I have seen have been on land. As a Baptist I 
would like to get a diver's suit and investigate the wet goods of 
old Callao in Davy Jones' locker. 

I didn't learn Spanish in Madrid and had taken no corre- 
spondence lessons since. Here I took my first lesson from the 
obliging ship-doctor, who taught me to pronounce Callao by 
knocking out the first 1 and making the second sound like y — 
Cayao. I paid dearly for this lesson, for after his boatman 
friend had landed me and my luggage at the wharf I was charged 
double, half going to the doctor for his instructions. He held me 
up, though I got by Peru's navy of two ships which I thought 
were two barges loaded with scrap-iron. 

I cleared the Aduana, or custom house, because I was not 
entangled with any typewriter or ardent spirits, and passing by 
shops, stores, warehouses, workers, strikers, dummy engines, 
saloons and dives, I sat down in a trolley car and was carried to 
Lima, seven miles distant. 

STALLED 



NO place like home" has a new meaning in this country. 
The hotels look like stables, although they are not as 
comfortable; the help is stupid and slow as a Spanish 
mule; the food is so seasoned you can't tell whether 
you are eating or drinking, and such is the style and hour of the 
meal you don't know whether it is breakfast, dinner or supper. 
The servant who waked me in the morning asked me if I would 
have a "desayuna," and supposing it to be a new kind of fruit 
or breakfast food, I said "Yes." He came back with some coffee 
and bread. On the strength of this I existed until 11 o'clock 
when I went to the dining room and picked up a bill of fare and 
seeing the word "Almuerzo" in attractive letters said I would 
have a small portion of that and if I liked it would take some 



TO HELL AND BACK 27 

more. After watchful waiting for about fifteen minutes he 
brought in everything from the a to z of what was a table d'hote 
breakfast, making me wonder if what was left over was to 
be served for the big meal of the day at night. 

We stopped at the Maury hotel because one must eat some- 
where. They gave me a suite of large rooms and a balcony from 
which I could play the part of Romeo to Juliet in the street, 
Plaza, or entrance to the old cathedral where lie Pizarro's bones. 

In the lobby a man hurriedly came up to me, supposing I was 
the newly arrived American minister, apologized for speaking 
without an introduction, handed me his card, saying he repre- 
sented the Steel Trust, wanted to be one of the first Americans 
to greet me and would meet me more formally later. I told him 
I was not the American minister but a minister from America and 
had often preached from the text "Thou shalt not steal." 



PIZARRO'S TOWN 



LIMA, founded by Pizarro, was once the political, com- 
mercial, religious and social center of South America. 
This "city of the kings" has been dethroned by earth- 
quake, revolution, fanaticism, fever, lethargy and lux- 
ury. The clock of Progress has ran down and if it is wound up 
it will be done by American and European hands who hold the 
mining, railroading and shipping key of the situation. 

The streets are straight, if some of its merchantmen are 
crooked, and narrow as most of the prevailing theology. The 
houses are one or two stories high and stare blankly at each 
other, while the shops are small and stuffy and crowded with 
signs advertising a "grand realization." Soldiers march here and 
there in the plazas and lie in wait at every street corner to head 
off a revolution. In the parks you may find some Spanish women, 
pretty as the flowers, and men bronze, stiff and haughty as the 
statues, but most of the people are Indians, half-breeds, Chinese 
and negroes. 

There are 67 varieties of one kind of church in as many build- 
ings. You fall over a bunch of beggars at the door as in Italy 
or Spain. Entering you are amazed to find so many more women 
than men when no woman is permitted to wear any "love of a 
bonnet" to service. If you haven't given all your money to char- 
ity, to the beggars inside and outside, you can buy a lottery or 



28 TO HELL AND BACK 

bullfight ticket at the door as you go out. Everybody is looking 
for a "hand out" and even at the street corners you find a cross 
or an image with extended arms asking alms. If you avoid being 
soaked this way you will be another way unless you carry an 
umbrella. They say it doesn't rain, but they have a misty moist- 
ure just as wet. 

To offset the general gloom with a little gaiety I dropped in a 
cafe where I had movies with my meals. Withered women 
button-holed me for fresh flowers. Everything was strange and 
I felt alone until a man at a nearby table ripped out a profane 
American oath. It sounded good to me, though. I know it was 
very wicked. I hope the Recording Angel, who blotted out Uncle 
Toby's oath, had a few tears left to wash this one away, and to 
forgive me for going up to him, extending my hand and saying, 
"God bless you, old man, I am glad to hear somebody talk Eng- 
lish even if he swears." 

After dark the people muffle up their faces to keep out the 
fresh air as though it were the plague. I felt plagued when a 
pretty woman did this, hiding all but her black eyes. However, 
in many cases I thought it would be well for the Lima women to 
hide their figures as well as their faces, for the sweet things eat 
a great deal of candy and grow fat and flabby. This habit has 
proved a bitter-sweet. Her mouth resembles a yawning church- 
yard, with broken tombstone teeth whence issues an odor which 
"Decay's effacing fingers" have stirred up. This may be one 
reason why love-making is conducted from a balcony, and why 
the smiling scientific American dentist has his hands full of 
Peruvian gold. 

A CHURCH TRAMP 

[Yvl N the way to my hotel I met a religious procession of 
I ^/ J women led by a priest and some officials. The women 
I^^^S wore black mantas and carried lighted candles in their 
IBBBsBI hands. The spectators uncovered their heads and 
bowed. Here as elsewhere in South America the women are the 
most faithful in their church duties. Men may be nominal mem- 
bers, and have some belief, but they don't seem to be working 
much at it except to aid charities by buying lottery, cock and bull- 
fight tickets. 

I followed the procession to the cathedral and then went to 



TO HELL AND BACK 29 

my hotel across the street, to sleep, perchance to dream. I 
couldn't get asleep and have a dream because the watchman on 
the corner under my window, like a midnight owl, screeched out 
a whistle every hour to tell me all was well, to keep himself awake 
and everybody else. The artist Whistler is known for his Noc- 
turne paintings, but these nocturnal whistlers are not artistic. I 
was getting sick of this "All is weir and fell asleep toward morn- 
ing when the big bell of the cathedral broke loose and raised 
bedlam. This may be a sleepy town, but not this way. One 
might as well try and rest in a boiler factory where a steam- 
hammer was nailing the rivets through iron plates. 

Later I made a round of the churches, for they are the real 
show places of Lima. La Merced, with its silver high altar, high- 
society worshippers, and little booths and reclining chairs where 
they rest body and conscience from sin; San Francisco, with its 
marble cloisters; Santo Domingo, where Saint Rose, the city's 
patroness, is done in marble, and posed on a be jeweled pedestal 
high above the poor Spanish and Indian worshippers who have 
sacrificed their necessities for her adornment. There is a modern 
Madonna here with a rosary of large pearls which make Saint 
Rose blush a deeper red for envy. I don't think Nevin got the 
Rosary inspiration from this church. To me it suggested any- 
thing but that sincere devotion which worships in spirit and in 
truth. 

The Cathedral is at the head of the Plaza des Armes, the big 
public square with fountains, statues, trees and flowers. This 
plaster and dirt building with its broken facade, two tumbling 
old towers, weather-beaten doors, is a big, barney, unbeautiful 
thing that stared through my hotel windows for five days. And 
even this isn't the original material, for the quakes have shaken 
it so often that it has been constantly repaired. The big interior 
is unbroken except where the plaster has fallen down. It was 
so damp the sweet-lipped organ was a little flat, so dark I couldn't 
see whether the pulpit was plain or carved, the stalls cedar or 
pine, whether Murillo's "Veronica" was a real copy by Rem- 
brandt or one by one of the archbishops whose portraits adorn 
the walls, and so dismal that I thought it was a fit resting place 
for Pizarro's bones. 



3D TO HELL AND BACK 



OLD BONES 




ASKED the mummy-looking custodian to see Pizarro's 
bones. He didn't seem to understand until he got a 
piece of money as interpreter. Then he limped to a 
shady corner of the church, unlocked a little iron gate, 
lighted a candle after I greased his palm and showed me a glass 
case where I saw a sword, rosary, some dry old bones and a 
brass tube which contains a document signed by Pizarro or some 
one equally trustworthy, 'These are my bones." His legs were 
long, as if he had walked over and tramped on the laws of God 
and man ; the arms, a little short as if he had hugged everything to 
his selfish, swinish soul; the skull, small, yellow and newly var- 
nished as if he had lost his head and some one had tried to put 
a new one on him. The law of supply and demand has been so 
overworked by head and sacred relic hunters that forests, mines 
and cemeteries have been robbed to furnish pieces of wood for 
the true cross, crucifixion nails and bones of saints and martyrs. 
If we may believe certain church histories, some saints had more 
bones than a shad. 



A REAL DEVIL 



NEAR the Cathedral, in an open arcade, you see a white 
marble slab where Pizarro's enemies ran him through 
with a sword and where, while dying, he dabbed his 
hands in his own blood and made the sign of the cross. 
Well he might, for if there was ever a thieving, murdering fiend 
fresh from hell, a fit twin brother to Nero, it was Pizarro. 

A bastard by birth, an illiterate hog-driver by necessity and a 
butcher by choice, he was greedy for gold and made voyages and 
discoveries with others until at last he went in the business for 
himself and king. On a mission of fraud and cruelty he stalked 
forth with the sword in one hand and the cross in the other to 
serve God and Mammon at the same time. 

Coming to Peru he was anxious to leave his card and make 
a friendly call on the Inca king, Atahualpa. The latter, anxious 
to be a good fellow took a small bodyguard and went out to see 
the pale face from Europe. Pizarro approached and gave him 
to understand that the jig was up, and asked him to hand over 
his sceptre to Charles and substitute sun-worship for Christianity. 



TO HELL AND BACK 31 

This was a big favor to ask on so slight an acquantance and he re- 
fused. While Pizarro was waiting for the next move in the game 
his priest Valverde came to the rescue with the spiritual advice, 
"Fall on Christians, I absolve you." They slew Atahualpa's 
guard, dragged him to a room, and when he said he would fill it 
with gold, if they let him out, took his 23 million dollars, brought 
there as a ransom, and charging him with his brother's murder, 
put him to death. 

Pizarro captured Cuzco, the Inca capital, robbed its temples of 
hundreds of millions of gold and silver, founded Lima and made 
it the most profligate and luxurious city in history. 

He robbed Inca temples to build cathedrals. Spain got one 
fifth of the 90 million booty in gold and silver which he ex- 
pended in his evangelical work among the Indians. Billy Sun- 
day's collections are a widow's mite in comparison, for Prescott 
tells us that from a single Inca temple Pizarro took 24,000 
pounds of gold and 82 thousands pounds of silver, and that one 
of his lieutenants got busy with a hammer and pulled out 22,000 
ounces of silver nails with which the fine churches of Lima were 
built. Pizarro the victor became the victim — even handed Jus- 
tice got him at last. 

The poet Southey wrote an epitaph on him for a Pizarro col- 
umn, inviting the spectator to thank God "who made thee, that 
thout art not such as he." 

I know what I think about Pizarro and what I would like to 
say, but my publisher refuses to print it, and if he did his ink 
wouldn't be black enough to tell the true story of this human 
devil's life. Even Satan and Judas have their admirers and 
apologists and there are some people who try to whitewash 
Pizarro's character and have placed this gold-hunter among the 
saints with a crown of gold on his head and a golden harp in his 
hand in the city whose streets are gold. 

LIMA BEANS 

TJHE Valkyrie here are milk-women who ride astride a 
I horse with cans of milk on either side. I didn't want 
any milk. I wanted the picture of one but there was lit- 
tle of the milk of human kindness in her disposition for 
every time I leveled the kodak she turned and pranced away until 
I am sure her milk was churned into butter. 



32 TO HELL AND BACK 

One finds odd names on signs and holy names on unholy 
places. The word "Colon" on a cafe looked familiar and I ven- 
tured in. I made several discoveries. A sawdust floor, with ta- 
bles here and there, at which sat long-nosed Spaniards drinking 
coffee or chocolate from long-nosed pots. On one side of the 
room was a bar-shaped counter stacked with meats, beans, vege- 
tables, fruit and pastry and the presiding genius over it all was 
a big yellow cat enthroned on a cushion of fresh vegetables with 
a raw fish on one side and a cooked ham on the other. After 
she had warmed up the platter of sliced ham the proprietor 
shoved her off and sold the meat, but I suddenly became an apos- 
tate Jew and passed up the pork. Proud of their mother's posi^ 
tion, and happy in the hope that they might some time occupy 
a similar honor, her numerous family rolled in the sawdust, made 
a gymnasium of the chair rounds and cleared the tables at a 
bound. 

There are a number of second-hand and curio shops, with 
counters strewn with the driftwood of various and valuable an- 
tiques, from the wrecks of wealthy Spanish families sunk into 
bankruptcy or scuttled by the piratical Chileans in their wanton, 
wicked attack on Peru and its capital. We saw historic and 
prehistoric religious relics and Inca images of many sizes and 
shapes done in chased and unchaste gold and silver. There was 
a little solid silver devil that I wanted to wear as a watch-charm 
or stickpin but he was such base metal that I feared the custom 
officer wouldn't let him pass the New York dock. 

BULLY SPORT 

OjPERATIC and theatrical entertainers come and go but 
J the church and the bull-ring remain forever. It wasn't 
Sunday, bullfight day, but I wanted to compare the ring 
and pen with Madrid ; so I hunted around to find a car- 
riage and a driver who knew English. Approaching an ebony Jehu 
I said, "Speak English?" "Yes, sir, I'm from Boston." Shades of 
pork and Lima beans. His repeated use of the suggestive words 
"chock full" convinced me he had told the truth. Lowering the 
top of the cab, for which he raised the price, a trick they have 
here if anybody wants to see anything, he drove us across the 
old bridge that spans the Rimac river. It was hot, the river 
wasn't, but looked as if it had curled up and gone to sleep in 



TO HELL AND BACK 33 

its bed. This dirty part of the town resembled a section of" 
Constantinople, only there seemed to be more half-fed, flea- 
bitten dogs which ran before and after us with a yowl and a 
yelp that made me know as never before the strength of Peru- 
vian bark. We roused the ring-keeper and all the dogs and na- 
tives in the vicinity, went into the blood-stained arena, clambered 
over the empty tiers, sat in the president's box, imagined the 
Sunday crowd and the gory spectacle but had to content our- 
selves with a pasteboard bull stalled on the high wood ridge, ad- 
vertising no English Durham castle, or American brand of to- 
bacco, but a shoe. Spanish cities pride themselves on their bull- 
rings next to their churches, but this ring like everything else in 
Lima was cheap and shabby. 

Back of the ring was a promenade where families, friends 
and flirts could meet and get something to eat and drink after 
their appetities had been whetted by the sight and smell of blood 
or play a game of chance. There was a chiffonier-shaped box 
full of numbered pigeon holes from fifty to one thousand. I 
picked up the ring, gave it a toss, it rattled and bounced from one 
tier of pigeon holes to another and landed in the thousand mark 
pocket. This was the luckiest number, but as luck would have 
it I was playing alone and it meant three ciphers without the one. 
Had it been a real game I couldn't have made such a throw in 
a week, and my companion would probably have landed the thou- 
sand the first time and I forced to mortgage my return ticket to 
pay my gambling debt. 

They used to have bullfights in the Plaza Mayor when the 
"mayor" and the archbishop were in the sporty swim and could 
be seen among the sea of faces. Sometimes when they were 
bored or there were no bulls to fight they brought out a heretic 
and burned him for the glory of God and their own fun. They 
weren't daffy about autos in those days, but they had auto de fes 
which must have pleased them just as well because they killed 
a good many more. 




34 TO HELL AND BACK 

A CHAMBER OF HORRORS 

WENT to the Senate Hall, for years the Inquisition's 
slaughter-house. Here as in Cartagena, Hell had its 
tribunal and myriads were sentenced to cruel torture 
and death inflicted on body, mind and soul. 

This Christian institution of the church came from Spain, in- 
vented from plans furnished in perdition. The Inquisition, a pain- 
ful subject, was the favorite pastime of Ferdinand and Isabella 
against political and religious heretics. This beautiful invention 
sprang full-armed from the head of the Dominican Monk Tor- 
quemada and was successfully worked on hundreds of thousands 
who were imprisoned, murdered or burned alive. Among them, 
the great, the rich, the poet, the scientist and artist — as well as 
the poor and ignorant. This damned spot can't and won't out 
and flourished in Lima 100 years after it was suppressed in Spain. 

After the priestly patrol-wagon had run in some poor victim 
he was given a mock trial and turned over to the "secular arm," 
for the Holy Office could not shed blood. Before being made a 
human torch-light or an election bonfire there were certain pleas- 
ant preliminaries. A kind of gymnasium was afforded where a 
man was stretched on a horizontal rack until his bones were 
pulled out of joint. Tying two big stones to a man's feet they 
hoisted him by an iron chain over a pulley until he touched the 
roof, then let him go with a jerk so that in coming down he 
tobogganed over spikey rollers which cut into his back and then 
bumped onto the floor breaking all his bones. 

Nothing was wanting to make it pleasant for the victim in 
his torture chamber. If sleepy he could be rocked in a cradle of 
spikes ; if his circulation was bad he was beaten with iron whips 
with spiked circles for lashes; there was a manicure set to dig 
beneath the roots of his nails; if sad, they offered him a glad 
hand which squeezed his fingers until the bones were splintered ; 
if his ankles were weak or he had varicose veins they encased 
him in boots which were tightened until his flesh and bones were 
ground to jelly ; if hard of hearing, there was a hoe to grub out 
his ears ; if his mouth was cankered there were pinchers to tear 
out his tongue ; if thirsty, there were iron ladles filled with melted 
lead or boiling pitch to pour down his throat ; if his eyes were 
weak there were needles which could be thrust through the pu- 



TO HELL AND BACK 35 

pils; if he needed a haircut, there was a barbarian who could 
scalp and skin him to the bone; while for vitals and sex-nerve 
centers there were instruments of devil-damned cruelty and 
ingenuity. If ax, pincher, saw, nail and screw didn't remove his 
heresy, and he would not recant, there remained one further ar- 
gument, the auto de fe. On a festal Sunday he was dragged 
out of his dungeon, dressed in his San Benito, his Sunday best, 
a stylish wool suit close round his neck like a collar and down to 
his knees like a frock. Since there was no streak of yellow in 
the martyr, his fiend friends covered him with yellow-colored 
stuff embroidered with a scarlet cross and decorated with flames 
of fire and figures of devils. All this is hard to believe — but it's 
history and I know some people who would like to repeat it. 

It was a relief to get out of this chamber of horrors where 
the ghosts of the past must haunt the minds of the present Senate 
in any attempted legislation for intellectual and religious liberty. 
Significantly opposite is the bronze heroic statue of Bolivar who 
with San Martin wrenched Peru from Spain and made her inde- 
pendent. This statue, like Pompey's, was once drenched in blood. 
I sat on its base which had been chipped, not by artist's chisel, but 
assassin's bullets. Bolivar was the S. A. G. W. As we go to 
Mt. Vernon for inspiration, so Peru patriots stand by this statue 
to learn the lesson of liberty, though they fall shot down by the 
revolvers of liberty-hating revolutionists. 

To keep people in the path of liberty streets are named after 
patriotic calendar dates. I was here a week in September and 
every day walked on July 28th. This is their Fourth of July, 
which takes about a week before and after to properly celebrate. 

JAIL BIRDS 

HE best building in Lima is a prison and the people who 
oppose political liberty and abuse personal liberty find 
sanitary and splendid accommodations within its walls. 
If you are stopping in Lima for a short time I recom- 
mend it instead of the hotels for your quarters. It is on a broad 
street, with a pretty park nearby. There are many ways to get in 
but few to get out. There was a sign prohibiting visitors, but 
when the warden saw my Pan-American credentials he was glad 
to let me in. Next to our Bilibid prison in Manila it was the best 
constructed and conducted jail I'd seen. They called a guard to 




36 TO HELL AND BACK 

guide me around as if they were unwilling to take a chance on a 
gringo. My wife wasn't willing to trust them and started to 
follow but they made the sign language that she must stay right 
there until I came back. So I left her on the circular platform 
surrounded by armed guards who would see that she did not run 
off with a handsomer man while I was gone. At the entrance of 
each corridor are the words "Silencio-Obedencia-Trabajo." A 
word to the wise is sufficient and I knew enough Spanish not to 
talk to the prisoners and to obey my guard, but for fear I might 
"trabajo" I pointed my cane at the word and he translated it into 
the word "industry" by taking me through the various apartments 
where the busy bee prisoners were making shoes, clothing, fur- 
niture and machinery. Working a little over time they make 
souvenirs to sell to visitors and so have some pin money to stick 
in their mouth in the shape of candy or tobacco. I bought a 
carved cup and drank a silent and imaginary toast to my absent 
brothers, and a small ivory harp-shaped set of toothpicks to free 
imprisoned food though it could not the convict who made them. 

Like Moses there were hundreds of prisoners who had broken 
the Ten Commandments and as many laws from as many coun- 
tries. A German came to me, said he was a political prisoner, 
that no South America papers were allowed the prisoners but 
thought they would let him have one from North America. He 
asked me to address it to his "number" for the prisoners belong to 
the no name series. He was so sad and sincere that I promised 
and have been on the outlook every since to find a newsy, clean, 
truthful, fair, free, fearless newspaper that wouldn't impair his 
mentality or morality. Time was when our press was one of 
the best and mightiest forces in our civilization but it has become 
mean, mercenary, mendacious and muzzled, the supreme cor- 
ruptor of the age in which we live. 

I left this human menagerie for the zoo where I found 
many old friends and made a new acquaintance, a Mr. Condor. 
He was a sure enough jail bird, with glossy black coat with broad 
white stripes across his wings; his neck was red and wrinkled, 
and around it a snow-white collar of down ; his bald head had a 
convict cut and he was a tough-looking customer. I was glad 
there were iron-bars between us because as a child I had heard 
he was so big and strong he could pick up a sheep in one claw and 
a child in another and with a sweep of his forty-foot wings light 



TO HELL AND BACK 37 

on the icy tops of the Andes to keep his meat in cold storage. 
But this is a fairy tale, carrion is his favorite dish and not what 
I saw but what I smelt was the strongest thing about him. They 
say he has powerful eyesight but he had dined and was taking an 
after-dinner nap when I saw him. Some people are caught in 
drink and some in food. He was probably lassoed after he had 
stuffed himself with a dead horse or cow. On leaving he woke 
up, gave me a penetrating glance, dropped a tear and a feather 
for a quill pen to write something nice about him when I got 
home and compared him with his North American cousin, the 
eagle. 

This vile, villainous-looking vulture is the national bird of 
Chile and a fit symbol of those human vultures, the Chilean sol- 
diers, who swooped down upon Peru, killed the inhabitants of 
Lima, carried away its treasures and befouled and destroyed 
every beautiful thing in the city. 

P in Peru should stand for peace and prosperity, but instead 
it stood for the spirit of Pizarro in the Chileans, the modern van- 
dals of pillage, prostitution and perfidy. 

A DEAD TOWN 



LIMA was so dead that we took a joy-ride to the 
cemetery to liven up and entered the gate with a 
funeral procession. While the corpse went to the 
chapel for a religious service we thanked God we 
were alive and strolled through the narrow, well-paved streets 
of this city of the dead. Here was a population larger than 
Lima and dwelling in a city less decayed. There is a poor quar- 
ter here where the crowded occupants are shoved into holes in the 
wall like letters in a pigeon-hole. If living relatives do not dig up 
1 'bones" enough to pay their rent, the dead bones are thrown 
out, the hole is plastered up and the poor man's name is scratched 
in the wet mortar. If the man was a little better off in life he 
is a little better off in death for he occupies a marble front 
compartment with his name indicated in raised or sunken letters 
surmounted by a cross or surrounded by a wreath. The fash- 
ionable are still exclusive. Separated from common clay, in the 
better part of this city, each has his marble mansion, adorned 
with statuary, where he receives the flowers and visits of his 
friends. When a stranger calls on the big men of the city they 




38 TO HELL AND BACK 

are either busy or generally out, at least to him, but here at the 
Pantheon I found Peru's great men "all in" and waiting to re- 
ceive me. They were in state with banners, arms and a host of 
flattering epitaphs to soothe the dull cold atmosphere of the place. 

As an American I was glad to call on Henry Meiggs who 
measures higher up to me than all these because he put a railway 
out from Lima over the Andes, 17,500 feet above the sea. 

If he didn't make financially good in the United States he did 
down here and sent back money enough to pay all his debts. I 
don't know what Peru paid him but she owes him a debt of 
gratitude she never can repay. 

THE CELESTIAL RAILWAY 

LEFT his stone monument and the next morning visited 
his iron one, the Peru Central Railway. It is not only 
a carrier but a civilizer and Christianizer, a true Celes- 
tial Railway. By 6 :30 the engine had tanked up on oil, 
we on coffee and were all aboard for cloud-land. After a few 
thousand feet hard climb the engine stopped to breathe. Way 
up in a cloud it was natural we should find a poet floating 
around, and this was an English one. I wasn't surprised for you 
will always run into a Britisher whether you are on the earth, 
the waters beneath or the heavens above. He didn't have the 
Apollo locks or flowing garb of a poet but a prosaic Khaki dress 
and made up for it in his address. I asked him to share my seat. 
He did and rewarded me by pulling a poem out of his pocket 
that lasted to the next station, describing how grand the view 
was and how mean the people were. Like Apollo he knew physic 
as well as poetry and invited us to stop off and see two of his 
patients who had the "verrugas," a new kind of disease you can 
only get here. They had worked on the railroad and slept in 
the tunnel with a protecting net when something worse than a 
bug, flea or mosquito bored into them, leaving a poison that 
swelled them like a balloon, warted them as a toad and lumped 
them with boils that would have made Job sore and want to 
swear. They seemed so hideous and inhuman no Poe nor poet 
could describe them. The thing for a man to do here at night 
is to go home and sleep in his own bed. 

To show there was beauty as well as the beast and make a 
return for the bouquets I had given his verses he said he would 



TO HELL AND BACK 39 

meet us on the down train with some violets. He did, and it was 
some bunch for it was ten inches across the top and as fragrant 
as if Tennyson had picked them in England. 

Like a snake our train crawled and wound over and around 
the rocky hills, bald and barren as some men's heads and ideas. 
Below yawned canyons in sleepy shadow, around and above tow- 
ered mountains which the Incas terraced from broad base to 
bare top, filled in with earth, watered with mountain streams and 
farmed with rude tools to grow their grains. This is the highest 
real estate I ever saw and they cultivated it with the care of 
Rhine Germans and Norwegian peasants. Let the modern farm- 
hand who rebels at early rising, curses the chores, breakfasts on 
ham, eggs, Johnny cake, jam and six cups of coffee and rides 
around all day on a plow or reaper, think of the poor Inca 
farm-hand, half-frozen, after he had loaded a lot of llamas and 
mules, swallowed some jerked meat, dry bread washed down with 
chicha, or a condor tgg he had brought down the night before, 
who had to get up on a mountain top before he could get down 
to business. Then instead of swearing, he offered a prayer and 
hymn of praise to the Sun-God to ripen his crops, thaw out his 
bones and lighten his work and walk. 

This road has no high grades and so ignorant tourists can 
easily pass. The train switched forward and backward like a 
cow's tail. Often one sees the track a hundred feet below. Al- 
though I had lived in Kentucky for five years I had not learned 
to do without water, but here I had to as it was more poisonous 
than Green River and left a worse headache. We could hardly 
wait to get to the stations where the dirty natives sold flowers, 
fruit, buns, soup, hot and cold milk. What solids the liquids con- 
tained none but the Omniscient knew, but we closed our eyes, 
strained the stuff through our whiskers, lips and teeth and drank 
it down without asking any questions. 

So far no one has had faith enough to remove these moun- 
tains and the train has to perform circus stunts to get over them. 
One minute it balances on a ledge over a bottomless pit, the next 
runs breathless through a long black tunnel, then frightened, 
rushes out and takes a flying jump over a tressel until we won- 
dering spectators grow dizzy, gasp and the high altitude gives us 
a soroche souvenir. 

Leave hope of health behind ye who come up here. At 14,000 



4Q TO HELL AND BACK 

feet our train became a hospital on wheels and the passengers 
were patients with wheels in their heads, lungs, hearts, stomach 
and other vitals. The natives are afraid of ventilation and would 
rather pick up a muffler a consumptive had dropped and wear it 
over their mouths than breathe fresh air. So the car doors and. 
windows were shut and stretched out on seats or huddled in cor- 
ners, they gagged and gasped, squirted vile-smelling perfumes on 
their faces for revival purposes, swore, made the floor one big 
spew-pan or cuspidor till the air was as strong as a steerage cabin 
in a storm. I was from Minnesota and liked fresh air but when 
I tried to open a window I was almost killed by dagger looks 
and alarming gestures, so I closed the window and my mouth, 
sidled out to the platform and sat on the steps, hanging on to 
the rail and wondering how long I would last in the sixty tunnels 
to a hundred miles. 

Rolling through clouds of yellow smelter smoke of mining 
towns, lassoing a mountain shoulder or threading its needle nose, 
our engine whistled "Hello" to mountain sentinels with snowy 
locks and wrinkled faces who had stood guard for centuries 
peeking out from their fort foothills, that echoed back "Hello." 
We were six hours coming from the low summer land of farm, 
fruit and flower to the Greenland of snow and ice nearly 16,000 
feet high. Intoxicated by the air and scenery I jumped off the 
platform into a snow drift and started to make some snow-balls 
to fire through the closed car windows so we could have some 
fresh air, but the train started, I jumped on and my contribution 
to the fresh air fund was misappropriated. 

At Ticlio, the highest ticker station in the world, I wired 
ahead for rooms in a dog kennel they call a hotel. One has a 
ticklish time up here. At last I was in high life. I made for the 
best cafe in sight. It was in the railway station. I poured down 
some hot coffee and threw in a line of food with a lead-sinker 
biscuit baited with some kind of tough meat that would have 
made good sole leather if one could have driven nails through it. 
I felt in high spirits. What I threw into my stomach flew to my 
head. I grew dizzy and became giddy, I breathed like a heavy 
horse, talked more fluently than ever before, walked as if I had 
fallen off the water wagon or had been run over by a locomotor 
taxia, and as I reeled out of doors, Meiggs and his mountain com- 
panions seemed to nod their heads and say "Hello, old sport, this 




TO HELL AND BACK 41 

is the life." But the pressure was too high, I was glad to lower 
it, so when the train whistled to me, I started with it and we ran 
for two hours down hill some three thousand feet, until ex- 
hausted, my Paterson, New Jersey engine friend stopped at 
Oroya to get its breath and I did the same at the Gran Junin 
hotel. 

SOROCHE 

REMEMBER Oroya for its mountain scenery, rail- 
way station and Soroche. "L," who for the last two 
hours had been cramming his mind with guidebook in- 
formation and his stomach with German chocolate, was 
pale as Mr. Death and quiet as a mud-geyser before eruption. 
Entering the hotel he answered the glad hand look of the keeper 
by saying "I'm going to vomit." He didn't understand but I 
did and rushing to my room grabbed an empty John D. oil can 
which "L" filled with chocolate, after he had already poured a 
Niagara of it over my light coat and gloves and then rolled into 
bed without taking off his hat, overcoat or shoes. Now it was my 
wife's turn. The room spun around and when she saw a bed 
coming her way she grabbed it and fell in head first. I asked 
them how they felt, what they wanted or I could do for them 
and they replied by tossing their arms, kicking like steers, gasp- 
ing, groaning and rolling their eyes till I thought I was in an 
operating room or a bug-house. 

He laughs best who laughs last, and while I was sorry for 
the family I chuckled with delight and felt fine and hungry. As 
I went out to find something to eat the moon looked in the win- 
dow on two half-dead people in a room without chairs, where 
the floor had never been scrubbed, and on wall paper that bore 
the finger-prints and soroche souvenirs of every former inmate. 
Groping through the dark hallway and guided by the railing 
I came to the head of the steep stair, made an easy descent, for 
the steps were well greased, slid into the dingy dining room and 
sat down at one of three long tables lighted with candles as if 
at a funeral feast. 

The service was slow. I bowed in thanks for what I had 
escaped and what I was about to receive but there was no answer 
until a man at an opposite table, who had taken pity on me, de- 
livered an oath which awoke the dumb waiter boy who shot out 



42 TO HELL AND BACK 

of the room and returned with a tray loaded with soup, vegeta- 
bles, canned goods, slabs of bread, crackers, coffee and beer. 
The Bible says that the prayers of the wicked are answered and 
I know the Bible is true for the bold, bad miner's oath was heard 
in heaven and heeded on earth. Thereafter I looked the words 
I dared not utter and it helped some because the terrified servant 
mad haste to serve me. I buried all my obsequious servant 
brought in and with a "mucho gratias" and tip left him. I came 
back when he wasn't looking, picked up my chair, carried it up 
to the room, placed it between my two patients and there in the 
candle light I recited my bill of fare and seasoned it with sev- 
eral stories that made my wife declare the high mountain tops 
did not uplift man. 

There was no grand opera or other musical attraction that 
night except the groan and moan of my sick, so I laid me down 
to sleep and prayed my Lord my soul and stomach to keep. The 
night was not filled with music and the infesting cares of the day 
were still with us. It seemed of Artie length and the room was 
just as cold. I adopted the style of sleeping in my clothes piled 
over with Indian blankets, and crying out of their depths, hoped 
that if weeping endured for the night joy would come in the 
morning. Grief lasted all that long night and what we suffered 
would have made a new punishment in Hell. Our throats were 
dry, there was not a drop of water to drink ; our nostrils thick- 
ened until they seemed grown together ; breaths came in long and 
labored gasps and our heads were so big and dizzy we could 
hardly hold them up on the pillow. 

Bright and early we were awakened by an incense-breathing 
morn of burning grease from the kitchen under our room. With 
a hurried toilet we left the torture-chamber, knowing that we 
could wish our enemy no worse fate than to be assigned our 
room in this hotel. "Hail horrors! hail," would be a splendid 
motto to hang over the door. 

Outdoors the scenery was bare, especially the little naked, 
native children who ran around and did what they wanted, where 
they wanted, no matter who was looking on. Our hotel was a 
palace compared to their stone and thatch hovels. In front of 
them mas and grandmas, bundled up like animated rag-bags, 
sat smoking before a smoky fire, while some of the younger smart 
set were collecting "chips" in their aprons for fuel which the 



i'0 HELL AND BACK 43 

llamas had carelessly dropped on the main street and sidewalks. 

In the mining districts the only washings I saw were of old 
clothes in the little mountain stream back of the hotel. Eighty 
miles from here are the Cerro de Pasco mines where the old 
Incas and Spaniards struck it rich in silver and the modern 
Americans in copper. The Cholos work the mines and the com- 
pany works the Cholos who never strike for their altars and their 
fires because they have none in their wood houses shingled with 
empty cans. 

Mrs. "M" used the sun to get warm, "L" and I to take pictures 
of the passing show, made up of natives headed for a store 
filled with their necessities of life which consisted not so much of 
food and clothing as bottles of various kinds of booze, and of 
a loaded llama train which our train was soon to pass loaded at 
least with three people singing the loving refrain, ''Never Again.' 1 

A WILD RIDE 

1 1LM 1 R. BENTZ, a high official of this high road, was from 
I 1 Vj i our good old U. S. A.. When he learned I wasn't up 

BS§JS| here for my health or on a mining errand but for some 
l^ggggggf thrilling illustrations with which to wake up a sleepy con- 
gregation when I got home, he proved himself a good fixer by ar- 
ranging to have "L" and me go down on a hand card ten minutes 
ahead of the engine from Ticlio to Rio Blanco. We were to go 
by gravity, thirty miles or more miles an hour, and I discovered 
the gravity of the situation when I had to step in the station with 
my son and sign my death warrant that if the hand car flew the 
track and I broke my fool neck the road would not be responsible. 
My wife told us to go ahead, promising to follow and pick up 
the pieces if she could find any. 

Did you ever go to Wonderland and ride on a roller coaster 
scenic railway? Were you thrilled and nearly spilled? Then 
how would you like to go to the Wonderland of Peru, Nature's 
playground, and ride on a scenic raiway 15,000 feet high; where 
the avalanche bumps the Andean bumps ; where the crystal doors 
of the glacier palaces are always open ; where heaven's orchestra 
plays wind instruments and the thunder drum rolls to the baton 
flash of the lightning; where the mountain streams leap, dance 
and whirl over the stony floor; where the zoo is the llama, al- 



44 TO HELL AND BACK 

pacha and less human driver; and where all is illuminated day 
and night by the sun, moon and stars? 

We climbed into a box on wheels, small and strong with a 
brake manned by a swarthy native named Alta. He pulled out 
his watch, waved a signal, loosed the brakes and we were off like 
a shot from a gun. My, how the wind cut ! With one hand I but- 
toned the coat around my neck while I held on tight to the seat 
with the other. The glitter of sun-lit snow and ice soon gave way 
as a yawning tunnel with its icicle teeth swallowed us up. 
Through damp and dark we turned and curved for 4,000 feet 
and emerged from the bowels of the earth at the end of the tun- 
nel. Like demons on the wind we flew around curves, over 
trestles, looped loops, ziz-zagged, switching backwards and for- 
wards, then slowed up by a bridge where I looked down five-hun- 
dred feet on an overturned engine and freight train. Sometimes 
Alta stopped to give a section hand a message but when he looked 
back and saw the train was after us in pursuit, he freed the 
brake and we rushed on by mining camps and Indian settlements 
till we slowed up and stopped at Rio Blanco. My eyes had been 
filled with the icy tears of the trip but now that I was in a 
warmer temperature I was in a melting mood, and with gratitude 
that we hadn't tipped over I tipped Alta by more than his regular 
day's pay. I have slid down the Himalays from Darjeeling bv 
rail, and the ride was wild as the tigers which cross its track, but 
it was tame compared to this. I can only imagine one thing 
wilder — being hitched to the tail of a comet. 

Back to Lima and the Maury we spent most of the night 
looking around for a prohibition drink. There was no water, 
we didn't know the Spanish for lemonade but discovered a 
stand of pink, white and black pop and tried every bottle. It 
was warm and tasted like sweetened soap-suds which neither 
cleaned our mouths nor quenched our thirst. 

Lima ranked as a kingly city once but is a rank disappoint- 
ment now, unless you are a yellow faced Spaniard of blue or bad 
blood, a purple-faced priest, a bare-faced financier, a bold-faced 
revolutionist, or a double-faced diplomat with a big salary, fine 
home and official friends, making the best of your political po- 
sition until you can get something better. 

I left Lima without casting any loving looks behind and if 



TO HELL AND BACK 45 

Lot's wife had lived here she would have left the city of her own 
accord without turning to rubber. 

CALLOUS CALLAO 



AT Callao we resolved that the pirate fletteros should not 
rob us again and said we would only give them $2.50 
gold to put us and our luggage on board the "Imperial," 
which we supposed was anchored out from the harbor, 
and bring "L" and me back to see the town. The chief called his 
gang and six stalwart men lined up. One grabbed a small steamer 
trunk, another a suitcase and a third a handbag, the fourth an 
umbrella, the fifth a shawl and the sixth the kodak. We fol- 
lowed in Indian style hoping the row-boat would carry us and 
ours to the good ship in safety. Imagine our surprise, after a 
minute's walk, to find the ship we were anxious to board lying 
at the dock waiting for us. So they did us, we were easy marks 
and they made easy money. Instead of chewing the rag, I swal- 
lowed my chagrin and a banana from a bunch nearby. 

Leaving my wife to watch a diver go down in his suit it 
suited "L" and me better to look over the town and see the dives 
and divers things. Along the water front wharf-rats were gam- 
bling with a coin, "heads I win, tails you lose." I wanted their 
picture but they regarded the lens as an evil eye and I wasted two 
films and missed them for they scampered away; further on 
were witch-like women bending over an iron pot of bubbling broth 
on which floated animal remains, while others who had stabbed 
chickens through hearts, gizzards and entrails were roasting them 
on a spit and offered them to me. I was willing to take a chance 
on a bologna sausage but not on this, and thirsty, not hungry, I 
thought it was safe to drink soda water though I had to go in a 
saloon to get it. Here I met the U. S. captain of a sailing ship, 
a Colorado miner, a Minnesota drummer and a London salesman. 
I drank my soda and they wanted me to toast America and 
England in whisky but the captain already seemed stranded on 
the bar and the others headed the same way. I thanked them 
and told them the only champagne I could take was the "Im- 
perial" and started for it. If you want to find somebody in S. 
A. who talks English, just drop in a saloon. 

We trolleyed around the town until we found a church to 
offset the saloon, but it was dark, cheerless and badly patronized. 



46 TO HELL AND BACK 

More picturesque than church, market-place or club was 
the Aduana or Custom house built in an old fortress where 
Spain's flag last floated. Admiral Grau is Peru's national hero. 
I found him standing on a monument in the Plaza though his 
name and fame stand higher in the hearts of the Peruvians. 
Peru finds it hard to obey the Scripture, "Love your enemies," 
and I don't wonder when I recall how the Chileans robbed and 
butchered them. I am inclined to believe that what I heard was 
true that the arabesque, inlaid and fancy walk at the base of the 
monument is made of the bones of dead Chileans collected on the 
battlefield. I picked up several souvenirs from this human bone 
yard so there are that many less for the natives to swear at, 
tramp and spit on. 

Capital and labor shake hands here with their fists. Strikes 
are as frequent as earthquakes. Men were loafing who should 
have been loading the boats. I came to a crowd around a poor 
mule whose side had been gashed with a club by a striker. I 
thought more of the mule than I did of the men. Had his an- 
cestors eaten forbidden hay in paradise? If so, atonement must 
surely have been made by others of his race who carried Spain's 
exports over the Andes from Callao to Buenos Aires. 

PERILS OF THE DEEP 

WASTED no salt tears in the ocean and was glad when 
the "Imperial" pulled out from dock and dropped anchor 
waiting for the tide. Night came and with it the tide 
and I stood on the top deck wondering why we didn't 
start. I soon learned. Standing behind a funnel I overheard 
some words between the captain and an officer that suggested 
material for a new sea adventure by another Oliver Optic. The 
captain wanted to sail, the officer, three sheets to the wind, said 
the engineer didn't want to because six of his men were on 
shore in jail. It appears one of the crew had murdered a com- 
panion, thrown the body overboard and jumped in a row boat 
to escape. The captain sent another boat out and caught him, and 
five other men who were implicated were arrested and thrown 
in jail. Besides this I learned the third officer was in chains in 
his room and this first officer who was talking to the captain 
was intoxicated. It was he who invited me to drink with him 
just before supper and because I wouldn't and his companion 




TO HELL AND BACK 47 

tried to excuse rrie, he knocked the glass out of his pal's hand 
and wanted to fight. 

I had heard of the perils of the deep and with these added 
ones decided it was time to sneak away to my stateroom and 
pray for protection through the night, for I heard the captain 
swear he would run the ship if there was nobody but the engineer 
and himself to do it. In a few minutes the order was given, 
the anchor raised and the lights of Callao blinked and went out. 
A half an hour before I had started out to get Mrs "M" a drink 
and when she demanded, "Where is my drink ?" I told her to 
forget it as everybody on board had had too much. 

As I turned in to forget all these horrible things I turned 
on the light and the first thing I saw over my head in the bunk 
was this notice : "Yellow fever is caused by the sting of certain 
mosquitos. Examine carefully the corners of your cabin to 
make sure they do not exist there." I was born in New Jersey, 
the Eden of the mosquito, where many of them weigh a pound, 
but these tramp mosquitos from Guayaquil are different and they 
do not bite till five in the morning, or sing when they attack 
you. Even then it isn't the male with the black cap on his head, 
but the festive female who as usual is the deadlier of the sex. 
I searched the cabin carefully, to see whether I was to be alone 
that night or have a bed fellow and see whether it was to be Mr. 
or Mrs. Mosquito. Misgivings were unnecessary, all I found was a 
roach who having encroached on the preserves of the deck had 
come up to cheer me in my loneliness. I set my alarm for half 
past four so that if a female visitor did come from another 
stateroom I would be ready to roust and not receive her. 

WEST COASTERS 



SUN up, I made a tour of the boat. The upper deck 
was not filled with passengers but pineapples, bananas 
and oranges. The life boats were hanging gardens of 
flowers and plants, and when I tried to get in the saloon 
cabin to play some Sunday music on the organ I found the pas- 
sageway blocked by baskets of blackbirds and paroquets. Once 
in I found three Chilean soldiers, one asleep on the lounge and 
two devotedly engaged in playing cards. All I could play was the 
organ, and believing music was the universal language, and there 
was one piece of music everybody liked, I played the Soldier's 



48 TO HELL AND BACK 

Chorus from "Faust." This broke up the soldier's nap, the oth- 
er's game of cards and they came to me and looked the thanks 
they could not utter. Then I drifted into Sunday music and the 
captain came in. As a Briton he was bound to have Sunday 
religious impressions. He said he liked sacred music except one 
song, "Pull for the Shore," because once when they were in a 
storm and headed for the open sea a frightened missionary pas- 
senger collected his family and played this and other shipwreck 
songs until the crew grew crazy. 



AN ANCIENT MARINER 



CAPTAIN MATTHIAS was a big-headed, hearted, bod- 
ied, fisted and footed Welshman who had cruised this 
coast for thirty years and knew every foot of land and 
water, the mountains piled on the side and the islands 
thrown in. He was taking his boat to dry-dock at Valparaiso for 
repairs for she had strained her engines in getting away from the 
Peruvians in a little fracas, but whether it was a fight or a smug- 
gle, he didn't say. I wish he had, for he could tell more inter- 
esting stories than any man I ever met and I know there were 
many good ones he knew he wouldn't tell anybody. Hale, hearty 
and happy after years of hardship, he said it was harder to 
manage the crew on the boat than the boat in the sea. There 
were times when he wanted to double his first and knock them 
down, but since the English law prohibited this, he could only 
use a boat hook or a barrel stave and they were not always 
handy. He had a hard time, too, with passengers, especially 
theatrical people. Once he carried a show with a woman and a 
tiger and the tiger reached through the bars, caught one of his 
sailors by the shoulder and wouldn't let him go. The lady tamer 
refused to have her wild pet shot so the captain ordered the 
hose turned in the tiger's face and Mr. T. was so surprise that 
he let go at once. In addition the woman had a young cub in 
her cabin. Her husband objected to a third party and threw 
the cub out on deck. This disturbed my lady so much that she 
took poison. Again the captain was pressed into service, but 
this time used a stomach-pump instead of a hose. This is only 
a new version of the Lady and the Tiger. 

Another story of his illustrated the recent father and son 
movement On the trip there was a strapping six foot pair of 



TO HELL AND BACK 49 

fine looking men, fellows who didn't carry an ounce of bag- 
gage. Every time the 'Imperial" struck a port they went ashore 
and came back with a new suit. Their tastes were similar, like 
father, like son. The old man would spit, look around and say 
to the captain, "Where's that boy of mine?" "O he just walked 
back there with the first officer." "Well, come in, let's have a 
cocktail." Shortly after the son spat, looked around and said to 
the captain, "Where's the governor?" "O he's just gone back 
there with the first officer." "I say, old man, come in, let's have 
a cocktail." So the captain was solid with both parties and was 
getting more than his share of liquids. 

VERY BAD 



WITH the other cargo white slavery was carried on our 
steamer in an "imperial" way. A tough looking mid- 
=W»s die-aged dame got on at Callao with a pretty black-eyed 
fe&aBil girl. I noticed their dress, it was so gaudy, but all 
South American women love pretty shoes and clothes. Theirs 
was extreme in style and color. They should have been dressed 
in scarlet for they were of Mrs. Warren's profession. The 
madam made the bargains with some of the passengers and then 
sold the girl and spent some of the money in tips for the steward 
who was kept busy furnishing recreation and rest accommoda- 
tion for the ladies' gentleman friends. My cabin was not far 
from this "Maison de Joie" and I told the captain of my dis- 
covery. He swore an unthinkable and unprintable oath, said for 
years she had plied this moral ship-wreck trade between Callao 
and Valparaiso but supposed she had become more decent as 
she had grown older. 

At my table there was no chili sauce, only a saucy Chilean 
who always had some bit of startling information. One day lie 
heard an officer reprimand one of the crew and he told my wife 
that "Ze officer give him what you call 'Hell'." Like a good 
Chilean he liked his country when it was right but best of all 
when it was wrong and everything Peruvian he summarized in 
the two words "very bad." At dinner he never picked up a 
pineapple or banana without saying "very bad, in Chile very 
fine." He hated Peru and yet got off at Pisco. I wondered why 
until I learned he was a wine-merchant and Pisco was a wine 



50 TO HELL AND BACK 

port. This further explains why he opened so many bottles at 
meals and between times. We never had oranges at the table 
though our boat was ballasted with tons of them from Ecuador 
and sold in basket, bag or box to the natives all along the coast. 

We arrived late one night at Cerro Azul. The name sounded 
as if it might be a market for diamonds, lapis-lazuli and prec- 
ious stones. I looked over the side to see what the lighters had 
brought but there was nothing but some bags of sugar and two 
baby kid goats who like children cried all night for the light and 
with no language but a cry. 

One gray morning we anchored off Chala. The water was 
full of seals, and the rocks were covered with cormorants, home- 
ly as pelicans, but the best of fishers though they had never read 
of "Walton's Complete Angler." The main inhabitants of Chala 
are the cattle, the four-legged kind that are driven in from the 
interior pampas, which the two-legged ones ship alive or dead 
as beef and hides. If the men who hoisted the hides in our hold 
were samples of Chala's citizens I think the difference between 
the two and four legged caste of cattle can't be great. 

We were to get off at Mollendo the next morning and I rose 
up early enough to see the high Andes with their snowy night- 
caps and cloudy night gowns. The trunk was packed and left 
with the captain to leave with the British consul at Arica where 
we were to pick it up with another ship. There was a reason. 
Freight and baggage rates over the Andes are high as the moun- 
tains and you have to dig up as deep as the valleys to pay your 
bill. Not being a millionaire to write a baggage check we packed 
life's necessities in two valises to cross and recross the Andes. 

Standing on the bridge at mid-day the captain pointed out 
what was left of old Mollendo after the Chileans got through 
with it. After rolling, pitching and dragging anchor we finally 
made fast far out from the rock and surf for Mollendo has no 
harbor. 

BREAKERS 



T 



HIS was one of Mollendo's calm days and a little fleet 
of row boats came to land us. Calm indeed with swell 
ocean waves only fifteen feet high on which the boats 
bobbed up and down like corks. They lowered our lug- 
gage by rope but we had to go down the gang, perch on the last 



TO HELL AND BACK 51 

step, hang on for dear life until our little boat, half sunk in the 
trough, came up to where we could jump in it. One, two, three, 
and I was in and would have been in the water if the flettero 
hadn't grabbed me and set me in the centre where I couldn't up- 
set his boat. This was rough but the worst was yet to come. 
After climbing a range of mountain waves that appeared heaven- 
high and hell-deep, and being baptized by the salt water as a 
preparation for death, our guides suddenly swung the boat away 
from a big rock that was waiting with angry horns to gore our 
sides and from the breakers that roared and reached out their 
white hands to grab us, and keeping ahead of a monster wave 
that wanted to swallow us, shot us to the mole. It looked like 
a mountain with its stone steps, but we were learning the West 
Coast game of hop, skip and jump, and when the sea-floor was 
level with the bottom step we stepped off and on while the boat 
sank way down as if it would never come back. 

I have shot the Soo rapids with a drunken Indian in his 
canoe ; climbed from a row-boat on to the Muir glacier while its 
breaking and falling ice was making a tidal wave under me ; to- 
bogganed at Honolulu in an out-rigger canoe 25 miles an hour on 
the back of a Pacific wave till it broke on the beach ; have been 
rowed, pushed and poled ashore among the rocks and reefs at 
Joppa by Mediterranean sailors; landed at Tiberius on stormy 
Galilee where I cried like the frightened disciples, "Lord, save 
lest we perish," but the landing at Mollendo makes all these 
seem quiet as a mill pond. 

There are four ways of landing at Mollendo ; the way I did ; 
being rammed against the rocks ; swamped by the waves, or split 
on the mole when you land at the bottom. 

With the thankfulness of the Puritans who landed on the 
stern and rock bound coast, we climbed the slippery stone steps 
and passed through the toll gate. The custom officer smiled us 
through, but held up and taxed every native man and woman 
carrying in a few measly oranges or bananas. 

MAROONED. 

Ml OLLENDO has two hotels and each one is worse than 
I the other. Of two evils we tried to choose the less and 
went to the Ferro-Carril. It was a big, flat-roof ware- 
house of a building and the worse for wear. The best 
thing about it was the view of sea and shore, which you could not 



52 TO HELL AND BACK 

get for love or money because the windows were of frosted glass 
and the shutters of solid wood. Our room was a good-sized ho- 
tel in itself. It was the parlor and reception room and we got it 
either because there was no other room or we looked like no- 
bility incog. 

The most important room, however, was the bar, where thick- 
necked, big-bellied bottles of booze had been washed up from 
every corner of the world. Among the old familiar faces and 
names I saw a new one, a bottle labelled "J esus Water" standing 
between the two thieves of whisky and gin which steal away the 
brains. There is something in the name, for it is a good natural 
spring water from Arequipa, and as a Christian minister I took 
a bottle of this from all the others as my spiritual companion. 
"The natural water of Jesus," as the label reads, seems to be 
about the only pure and healthful thing in S. A. that bears his 
name and comes nearest to being the symbol of the water of 
life of which he was the divine substance. 

I went out to the porch, looked at the town and asked when 
the next train went, hoping I could escape after dinner. Samuel, 
a little French Jew who had been my friend and interpreter on 
ship-board, told me I was destined to stay here all day and night 
until noon next day for we had missed the day's train by fifteen 
minutes. Philosophic enough to believe all things come to him 
who waits, even few and far between slow South American trains, 
I started out to kill time and see everybody and thing in the 
town. 

I saw cattle hoisted from train to boat on cranes and won- 
dered how much higher beef would go when it reached the states ; 
visited the stone and iron market, the best built and furnished 
structure; the plain frame church, where the natives try to fill 
their starving souls; picked my way through narrow, stinking 
streets piled with filth and lined with rows of hovels from whose 
windows peered smoked beef looking women, while dirty naked 
little boys and girls ran in and out through open doors playing 
hide and seek behind piles of dung and dump; passed stores 
with little to eat and much to drink and by concert hall places 
where the coarse laugh of the men and screech of the women 
mingled sweetly with the scratch of the worn-out phonograph. I 
saw a pole sticking out of one window from which a red card- 
board horse was prancing in the breeze and I naturally thought it 



TO HELL AND BACK 53 

was a tavern where man or beast could drink. Here man was the 
beast and beauty was the woman nearby who held out a glass of 
chicha bigger than a Heidelberg beer stein. She had just sipped 
and wanted me to drink from it to her health, but fearing it might 
not be to mine, I smiled a "No, thank you, Mam," and in sign 
language saying no "if," "Forever farewell," went to the plaza. 
Instead of earth and grass there is a cement floor with round 
holes at intervals that are filled with dirt brought from many 
miles and in them struggle some stunted palms. 

The one think which keeps the inhabitants from going crazy 
and from jumping into the sea and drowning themselves like 
the Gadarene swine is a moving picture hall. I don't know what 
regular circuit it is on but we followed the crowd, paid the 
equivalent of a quarter for a reserved seat and saw Daudet's 
strong story, "The Blacksmith." I was surprised to find such 
an artistic and literary picture in this little, lonesome town 
perched up on a rock between the deep sea and desert sand. It 
shamed the mentally weak and morally monstrous movies I had 
seen in New York and later found in Buenos Aires . 

After the show there wasn't anything to do but go to bed 
and wait for the train. I was glad to know that if I missed the 
next train, and so was stricken with melancholy or something 
worse, there was a wireless and cable station where I could learn 
whether my country was prospering during my absence and what 
the baseball scores were. 

Up bright and early next morning we washed down some 
soup, eggs and hard bread with Jesus water, grabbed our bags, 
made a 100 yard dash down hill to the depot and a centre rush 
through the natives to the ticket office and the goal was reached. 
We were only two hours early but decided not to let this Ixain 
get away from us. I had already asked the English ship book- 
ings agents when I could get a train from La Paz to Arica, 
where I was to get my trunk and boat, but they couldn't tell me. 
Then I asked the English station-master the same question, for 
I had to time all my trip on catching my boat at Arica. He 
couldn't or wouldn't tell me and I learned why, because it was a 
rival rail line. Still, he was obliging enough to tell me that 
the Arica train ran about once a week and then mostly off the 
track and that his route was the straight and only way that led 
to my ship at Antofagasta. 



54 TO HELL AND BACK 

He was a cheerful chap and when he learned that I missed 
the train the day before, he said he was "sorry" for there had 
been an earthquake at Arequipa and he knew I would have en- 
joyed it. 

The train came and we went, leaving the cliff dwellers by the 
high sounding sea. In a few minutes a pock-marked conductor 
came up to me with pad and pencil and said something. I didn't 
know whether he thought I was an easy-mark philanthropist 
who would contribute for some orphan asylum, whether I looked 
like some famous man whose autograph would bring a price at 
some future auction, whether I was a fugitive from justice in my 
own land or had taken this train without paying my hotel bill. 
As Eli called on Samuel to translate the language God spoke, so 
I called on my traveling friend Samuel Eli, who had helped me 
before, to come to my rescue. He did and I learned that all the 
official gentleman wanted was my name and native land to wire 
ahead at the next stop to a certain hotel at Arequipa, the pro- 
prietor of which was doubtless some near relative or friend of 
his who would charge the Americans twice as much and give him 
half as a commission. 

A SANDWICH 



WE skirted the sandy sea shore, scaled the cliffs with twist 
through the mist, and in two hours climbed above the 
clouds to a table land 4,000 feet above the sea floor. At 
the head of this table, spread with a wide reaching 
cover of red and yellow sand, sat five mountain kings crowned 
with snow, Pichu, Misti, Chachani, Ampato and Corapuna. 
Judged by the bones and rocks scattered over the table it looked 
as if they had a meat dinner and thrown stones at the waiter 
for poor service. The different colored sand and stone on which 
the sunlight fell looked like so many royal napkins, while the 
medanos, those crescent sandhills as high as twenty feet, that 
shift about but keep their shape, were like so many crystal curved 
favors the guests had forgotten to take away. Although train 
doors and windows were closed I was forced to eat the sand 
crumbs of this barren banquet. 

It was slow and uphill work to get out of this bad land coun- 
try but our plucky engine puffed away and pulled us through al- 
falfa oases, worked by Indians, stopping at stations where homely 
natives offered us the most beautiful oranges I ever saw. I fell 



TO HELL AND BACK 55 

for the orange as Adam did for the apple and it was so delight- 
fully different from the peck of sand which I had eaten that I 
bought all in sight and then like Oliver twisted my mouth for 
more. 

INTOXICATED 



AREQUIPA at last ! We had come out of the wilderness 
into the promised land. The air was cooler, the sun was 
setting, the shadows lengthened and we were now at 
the feet of the mountain kings we had seen in the dis- 
tance hours ago. Their big rough faces were red and purple 
with the wine of the sunset they had been drinking. 

Intoxicated with orange juice, the scenery and the thought of 
a hotel where I could wash up, drink down and roll over, I reeled 
off the platform, bowed my respects to El Misti, fell into a car- 
riage and was driven to the Royal hotel. Here I was introduced 
to Damiani the proprietor. I had never met him before but the 
first part of his name was familiar. 

He ushered us across a roofless court illuminated by the lamp 
light of moon and stars, to the base of a stone stairway up which 
we wound as if it were another tower of Babel, and through a 
prison-like corridor to our cells for the night with transom ven- 
tilation into the adjoining bathroom unencumbered by modern 
improvements in plumbing. My host, Reynaldo Damiani, had a 
long name but after I saw my room I shortened it to "Damit" 
and after dinner to "Dame" for stopping there. 

After supper we went to the large electric lighted Plaza. The 
big stores were shut but there was a little odd shop where I 
bought some cheap postcards, a paper I couldn't read and a last 
year's lottery ticket I couldn't use. I was surprised to find one 
left over because here in this town of churches the God of Luck 
divides honor with deity and is worshipped by all the people most 
of the time. The streets were at right angles, the people had left 
them to go to bed or the movies but we saw some of the passing 
show the next morning, the high-bred Spanish hidalgos and the 
hybrid Peruvian Indians. 

Arequipa is a queer combination and contrast of the Fifteenth 
and Twentieth centuries. Its many bells have rung in new electric 
lights but not rung out the old open sewers, and in the bright glare 
of the one is seen the foul slime of the other. This smelled as 



56 TO HELL AND BACK 

rotten as anything in Denmark. God made these people a little 
lower than the angels and they have been lowering themselves 
ever since and poor human nature would have been dead and 
buried if kind Mother Nature had not taken care of them with a 
high altitude, sunshiny days and cool, clear starlit nights. I 
held my way and nose along these stony sewer streets followed 
by a tipsy fellow who wanted a tip and called me Mr. New York. 
I got away from him by jumping on a car only to meet another 
man who seemed to have imbibed too freely of sewer-gas and 
alcohol. He came over to be one of our party. The conductor 
asked him where he wanted to go. He didn't know so the con- 
ductor stopped the car and called a policeman who took him to 
jail for the night. We crossed a bridge and went to the end of 
the line, on the way back stopped at a little plaza full of feathery 
trees, plants and flowers, walked to the hotel, looked at El Misti 
asleep in his night-robe of moonlight, inhaled all the fresh air 
I was to have for the night and went to my prison cell where 
slumber's chain bound me. 

BELLS AND BIGOTS 

T wouldn't be necessary here for the "Queen of the May" 
to ask her mother to call her "early." The church bells 
will see to that, for they ring out an early fire-alarm 
as if your soul were already burning in hell-fire and 
they wanted to put you out. I felt put out, muttered the proprie- 
tr's profane name and knowing there was no further rest for the 
wicked, dressed and went to the Cathedral. It is a low, thick- 
walled building with a plain-looking tower at each end resem- 
bling a woman's or industrial exposition building at a state fair. 
An earthquake shook the old church down, but didn't destroy its 
theology. MediEVILism instead of modernity prevails. Inside 
it was big and bare except for the usual exhibit of church fur- 
nishings. It boasts a reputed Van Dyke, but if that was Van's 
he must have lost the immortal part of himself, his reputation. 
With the holy water at the cathedral door and Jesus springs 
nearby it seems any ordinary sinner should keep his soul and 
body well from godlessness and gout. 

Religion here is not up-to-date. There is electric light and 
spiritual darkness. Arequipa has trolley cars, but stands in a rut ; 
manufactures jewelry from nearby gold and silver mines, but is 




TO HELL AND BACK 57 

plain of the ornaments of Christian character; her schools and 
libraries give a pedantry of information, but not a piety of refor- 
mation; there is a much needed medical institute which admin- 
isters to bodies, but not minds diseased; monasteries, nunneries 
and convents abound, offset by foundling homes where super- 
fluous Topsy babies just grow up. 

The town was and is fiercely fanatic. Not so many years 
ago a Protestant minister or Mason, instead of receiving Chris- 
tian consolation, would have been politely and persistently in- 
vited to go to hell and pains would have been taken to send him 
there if they didn't move out and on. Why? Because they 
might protest at gambling at church fairs ; at inconsistent priests 
and juggling Jesuits with their double standards and moral som- 
ersaults; at foolish and immoral amusements; at religious blow- 
outs which spend $50,000 or more annually for church festival 
fireworks to celebrate spiritual slavery; and at the wolves in 
sheep's clothing, the clergy, who for 400 years have preyed on 
the native Quicha Indians, holding them in ignorance and super- 
stition, degrading them socially and morally by drink and de- 
bauchery, exploiting their vices to get their money until today 
they are lower than in the days of the Incas. Under fatherly 
guise they have been fiends sending them to hell and not to 
heaven. 

The Latin doctors of divinity gave the poor Indians two treat- 
ments, one of exploitation, the other of miscegenation. After 
this I am not surprised the Indian lives in constant fear of 
devils, that he dreads to go in the swamp at night, that he 
fears that while he sleeps his dreaming soul may not come 
back and the soul of someone else take its place, and that even 
though he has plenty of chickens and sheep he would rather have 
you starve than give you any unless you coax him with a Colt's 
revolver and a package of coca. 

All this and more in the second city of Peru, where I could 
unfold true tales ''whose lightest word would harrow up thy 
soul" and make a Balzac tale read like a Sunday school story. 

In my short stay I made so many observations of the "eartV 
earthy" that I would like to have made a heavenly one in the 
Harvard Observatory at the foot of Mt. Misti, but I missed it, 
and the Yankee disciples of Galileo who nightly sweep the skies. 
This may account for the clear atmosphere of the sky and the 



58 TO HELL AND BACK 

dusty condition of the city. As usual our train left at the unrea- 
sonable hour of 7:30 a. m. and no Damianing could change the 
time table. I wasn't sorry, for too much is a plenty and I had 
had enough. The last thing I noticed as I left the station was 
not a church but a bull-ring where I thought it would be a good 
thing to take the papal bull against religious liberty and have 
some missionary matador run it through with a free lance of the 
Sword of the Spirit. 

Our train ran around Misti's feet and behind him we looked 
up to his head 20,000 feet above sea level and found he had a 
big bald spot back of his crown. Strong-lunged, our rocky moun- 
tain climber engine trailed us over the hills and far away until it 
stopped for something to eat and drink at a little station 13,000 
feet up in the sky. While it rested and took a quiet smoke we 
had twenty minutes for soup, and it takes that long to eat Peru's 
favorite combination of food and drink, grease, garlic, animal 
and vegetable garbage. There wasn't anything else to eat and 
this was enough, for it was a whole course in one and it took 
a long time to eat it and a longer time to digest it and a still 
longer time to forget it, for I haven't forgotten it yet. Crossing 
the track between herds of mules, alpacas and llamas, and pass- 
ing a few low, dirty native hovels I went to the little white 
church. I rang its bell outside the door in the yard with a good 
will wish for those whom it called Sunday to what at this alti- 
tude is a literal high church service. The engine drowned the 
echo of the church bell chime and again we moved and wound 
across this wind-swept wilderness of rock, down two thousand 
feet, by two large, lonesome lakes. On one of them there was an 
empty, water-logged balsa, while over the surface of the other 
darted hundreds of ducks, the only living thing in sight except 
some green grass on the surrounding hills. Reached Juliaca, a 
melancholy town. Herrick wrote lines freighted with love to 
his Julia, but the lines to and from Juliaca are freighted with 
produce and passengers. 

RATTI JULIACA 

WE stopped at Hotel Ratti, and it was. From the outside 
it looked like a barn, on the inside it smelled like c 
barn and our room was cold as a barn. After a meal, 
not half so nutritious as the cornmeal, hay, oats and 



bran mash of a first class stable, we climbed up to our stalls and 



TO HELL AND BACK 59 

lay down under all the horse blankets we could find. Mrs. "M" 
was half dead with soroche. I was in hot water and went down 
stairs to get some for her. I brought back a pailfull. She 
soaked her feet in it first and it felt so good that she drank some 
of it and was soon much better. 

To comfort her I said I thought more of her than the ruins 
of Cuzco and would give up the trip. She replied, "If it's only 
the ruins you want to see, you might as well stay and look at 
me." I knew she meant it, for the next day I found these words 
in her diary, "Wish I would hurry up and die — just think of this 
for a pleasure trip." 

I finally got mother and "L" asleep and spent the rest of the 
night listening to a wild windstorm that for hours tried to blow 
our barn away but got tired out and left. There were a few 
minutes of quiet when suddenly half a dozen dogs rushed up and 
across the hallway and out on the porch, which ran past our 
room all round the hotel, and started a Marathon. The high 
night air which was suffocating us invigorated them. They 
lapped and overlapped. The race grew exciting — they barked and 
howled till morning. I wanted to see them come into the finish 
and hoped it would soon come, but it was too cold to get up and 
if I had opened the door they might have taken me for a crook, 
who was trying to throw the game, and chewed me up. They 
kept this up until the smell of breakfast diverted their attention, 
when they raced down. Since we had to take another 7 :30 train 
there was no further time for sleep and I got up. 

While I was struggling in the office with my hotel bill, the 
breakfast bill of fare and the railroad time table, a Chicago boy 
blew in. He had been mining for gold up here, had got a "brick" 
and was going home. It was a lucky find for me, for he could 
talk Spanish and came to the rescue and relief of his American 
cousin. 

We had half an hour to spare and emulated the speed of the 
racing curs in seeing the town. Everybody was up and doing. 
Engines were switching, drivers were loading mules and llamas. 
On the way to the train we had to pass through an aisle of Indian 
women who cared for their babies while they tried to sell us 
pottery, peanuts, frozen potatoes, gloves, mitts and worsted dolls. 
Juliaca is one of the loveliest towns I ever visited, to get away 



6Q TO HELL AND BACK 

from. I imagine the only people here, who are perfectly happy 
with their lot, are in the cemetery. 

INSTRUMENTS OF TORTURE 

AT Tirapata a drunken "band" of Indian musicians came 
down to meet and serenade us. The rest of the inhabi- 
tants had not recovered from an orgiastic celebration 
of some saint or sinner. Here a few nights before my 
Chicago friend and two companions barred themselves in a room 
for protection. The drunken natives broke in and young Amer- 
ica swung on them with chairs and tables till they laid out half a 
dozen and drove the others away. 

Our serenaders had dirty faces, tangled hair and clothes that 
had only been pressed by their bodies as they had rolled in them 
at night. They swore, smiled, looked silly and swaggered. All 
this was a fit accompaniment to the horns, trombones and drums. 
Each man played a different tune in a different key at the same 
time, high and low, loud and soft, fast and slow. They stood on 
one foot and then on another, turned forwards and backwards, 
levelled their instruments at the sky and then shot them at us, all 
the while jerking their arms and twitching their faces as if they 
were suffering from indigestion, colic or delirium tremens. 
Wagner never attained such heights and depths. The echoes of 
that distracted discord lingered in our ears long after the fright- 
ened train pulled out and I thought if I ever wanted to start an 
Inquisition I knew where to find the instruments of torture. 

As we rose our spirits fell, for nearly everyone got soroche. 
Aromatic salts, sour stomachs and stale wind illustrated the prov- 
erb, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good." Several times "L" 
tried to make his mother wake up and look at the plain and 
mountain scenery, but the soroche fit was again upon her, she 
wouldn't open her eyes and mumbled, "Go away and let me 
sleep." I was awake and seeing things. Dogs that ran and raced 
and kept up with the train; doorways of huts decorated with 
skins and bushy tails of wolfish looking dogs ; Indian women 
under umbrella hats tending alpaca and llama herds, at the same 
time spinning a kind of humming top through which the wool 
is drawn into a thread and later spun into caps, socks, mitts and 
other stuff for the family. 



TO HELL AND BACK 61 

THE LLAMA 

HHE llama is about the only thing that can be intelligent 
and decent on these high plateaus. Faunlike, with little 
feet, tail, ears and large eyes, he holds his head high 
like an aristocrat and is friendly until he feels abused. 
Then he spits into your face a mixture of food and juice, with 
the accuracy of a Kentucky colonel expectorating towards a spit- 
toon, and with a force that blinds and sears. His spitting is not 
a bad habit, for it is used only in self-defense. The mule has his 
heels, the bull his horns, the cat her claws, the dog his teeth, but 
the only protection a llama has is to spit in your face. Unlike 
the human aristocrat he has brains and works for a living. He 
can carry from 100 to 200 pounds for a half or a whole day, and 
though no camel, he humps himself and finds and furnishes his 
own food and drink. This animal, descended from the wild 
guanaco, ascends the Andes; only three feet high at the shoul- 
ders he looms above his five-foot lazy driver; his hair is rough 
compared wtih the alpaca's and vicuna's and is only used for 
making coarse fabrics and string, but when he wears bright, 
pretty ribbons in his ears he seems as proud and anxious to be 
noticed as a woman with a new hat. The llama is no fool, even 
if some fools have said so. He is wise enough not to make a 
pack ass of himself, like the mules and natives, and limits not 
only his burden, but his hours as well, as if he belonged to some 
labor union. He only lies when he is tired and then philosoph- 
ically ruminates, chewing his cud. His morals are good, he 
doesn't gambol, but walks along and furnishes chips for the 
natives who do. 

One of the trials of my early life was the alpaca clothes I 
had to wear as a boy. Later, as a young minister, coming up 
from the study to the pulpit, wearing a black alpaca coat, an arm 
of a chair reached out and tore the pocket half way across the 
back and I had to pin it before I could preach. During the ser- 
mon I thought more of what the congregation saw than of what 
I said. I silently vowed vengeance on the alpaca whose wool 
led to my wool-gathering thoughts. But when I met some of 
the members of his family up here looking harmless as baby 
camels I forgave him. 

Leaving the animal train we plodded to the top of the divide 



62 TO HELL AND BACK 

where melted waters of a glacier rise from their marshy bed 
running South into Lake Titicaca and North towards the 
Amazon. As we descended our spirits rose. Farewell, glacier 
and soroche! Welcome, warm, fresh air and grain field, where 
the tread of the tramping cattle is the threshing machine ! In a 
field I saw a man ploughing, and driving a team of bullocks 
which pulled a big crooked stick for a plough. He was more to 
be pitied than the man with the hoe. I took his picture and 
gave him a tip. Ours was a special through train and only 
stopped long enough at Sicuani for me to see the clay houses 
and the putty-faced people and to be thankful I was not to share 
the town's hospitality that night. Two hours more by cultivated 
farms in this fertile valley and we rolled into Cuzco as the full- 
moon rolled over the surrounding hills. Lucky light. It was 
the only one the traveler had to guide him on his dark way. 

CURIOUS CUZCO 



WE stumbled from the station into a little horse car thai 
only runs once a day between trains and then walks. 
The car was black enough to be called the Black Hole 
of Calcutta and had almost as many people in it — but 
instead of being hot it was chilly and I was glad to have a seat 
and set a little girl on one knee and her mother on the other. 
Slowly this car hearse of living bodies wended its way to and 
through the gate of the city buried in sleep as its civilization had 
been for centuries. 

The steep, narrow streets were empty, store doors were 
barred and chained, even the houses had their window-eyes 
closed. This chloroform atmosphere would have put my head to 
sleep, as my legs already were with their native burden, had not 
the car stopped with a jerk, throwing me forward between the 
heads of the mother and daughter, who opened their eyes to the 
unusual situation. 

A little ragamuffin grabbed my bag and I followed suitcase 
and him up a dark alley to a big wooden door which he kicked 
and pounded. There was a rattle of chains and the door swung 
open, revealing a man who turned out to be the hotel proprietor. 

As he stood there with a dim lantern he seemed more like 
some old turnkey. When he looked at us I saw that his left 
"lamp" was out, but the one in his hand showed a friendly face. 



1 



a 




ft ^ 



TO HELL AND BACK 63 

Waving a kind of switchman's signal, that all was right, we fol- 
lowed him through a damp, dingy corridor, up a flight of stairs 
to a room 20 by 40 with a stone floor, a padlocked door and an 
iron grated window. He left the lantern and came back with 
some candles and in their fitful glare we dressed for dinner. We 
groped and smelled our way like a hungry dog to the dining 
room and dropped into the first seats we could find. A waiter 
came up and said something which I imagined meant the table 
was reserved and would I take another. I smiled, thanked him 
and picking up the bill of fare indicated I would take everything 
from soup to nuts. He started something in Italian which meant 
"No savvy," and if the only man in town who spoke English had 
not just then come in and acted as interpreter and peacemaker 
between us there might have been war in the quaint old, peaceful 
Cuzco. 

DISCOVERED 

0|UR deliverer was Mr. Balasch. He sat down with us, 
J said he was a Spaniard from Barcelona, had married 
a Cuzco belle, could talk five languages, had been the 
official guide of Professor Bingham and other geo- 
graphical savants and if there was any special line of investiga- 
tion we wanted to carry out he would be pleased to serve us. 

With sad voice and salt tears that seasoned my soup I told 
him we must leave early the next morning if we were to get the 
train, that got another train, that connected with the boat, that 
would connect us with a train, that connected with another train, 
that would get connection with the ship, which was the only one 
for a month, that would take us through the Straits of Magellan. 
Mine was the old story which he had heard before, for he smil- 
ingly interrupted me, saying it was generally so, that travelers 
who came to Cuzco spent much time and money to get there and 
then because of little time or inclination soon got out. He in- 
formed me that many magazine writers just stayed over night, 
did not go out to the ruins at all but took brief notes of his 
descriptions and explanations and then went back to Europe and 
America to write graphic and geographic ten-page articles of the 
wonderful ruins they had never seen and the social status of the 
natives, whom they had carefully studied between the hotel and 
depot. 



64 TO HELL AND BACK 

Thinking I might be one of "them lit'rary fellows" he offered 
to tell me anything I wanted to know. I told him it was full- 
moon and if Mark Twain could take in the ruins of Athens by 
moonlight I could do the same with Cuzco's ruins. "Very well," 
he said. But what was I to do with Mrs. "M," who refused to 
step outside of the hotel ? Leave her while I went. She said 
she thought it was safe in the room with the iron bars over the 
window and the door padlocked, if I took the key. I hesitated, 
and said, "If anything happens you are imprisoned." "Never 
mind," the guide interrupted, "she can't get out, the window is 
barred, the door is locked and you only have the key." I hadn't 
looked at it in this light, so leaving her with Providence against 
fire and theft we started. 



WALL STREET 



HE showed us the firm foundations of Inca walls and pal- 
aces built of big granite blocks. They weighed tons 
apiece and one of them had twelve angles so closely 
fitted into the other stones that you couldn't insert a 
pin. Builders brag today of concrete and steel structures, but 
quakes topple, fire burns and water undermines them. Here, 
without mortar or iron, these stones were cut and put together 
no one knows how or how long ago. On a large slab two ser- 
pents were carved in relief and it was a relief to know they 
couldn't bite. "L" pushed me up steep, stony streets with a gutter 
sewer in the center, down which poured a flood of filth that 
smelled to heaven, and must have made any angel of mercy pass- 
ing overhead, hold his nose. Occasionally we looked in a hole of 
the sidewalk, the home of a whole family squating on the floor 
around a sputtering light, eating and drinking something that 
looked as if it had been gathered from our hotel garbage can. 

Half way up the hill we tarried on a terrace to see an old 
Inquisition church with a big cross in front of it, and some 
damnable instruments of torture with which the Holy Church in 
the name of the holy cross had punished the unholy heretics and 
Indians. 

The stones were upright with a hole in the bottom and one 
on either side at the top, the whole looking like a big capital T 
and mutely standing for a Theology of torture. The guide tried 
to show me how wicked and wilful sinners were persuaded to 



TO HELL AND BACK 65 

accept the teachings of Him who proclaimed "Peace on earth, 
good will to men." An orthodox brother would take the victim 
and throw him on his stomach, shove him along until his head 
went through the hole, then pick him up by the legs, and stick 
them through the right and left holes of the T. This might be 
all right for an acrobat in good training, but was very trying to 
a stiff-necked young sinner or an old rheumatic saint. To make 
it very plain the guide was willing to use either "L" or me as an 
illustration, but one of us was too fat and the other too thin and 
he was unwilling to offer himself as a sacrifice. I have had 
some guides and if their punishment fitted the crime they should 
be stretched out and strung up here for a time until the tourist 
money rolled out of their pockets. 

A GIANT ROCK PILE 

SROM these evidences of Christian charity it was pleas- 
ant to climb the terrace where the old heathen Inca 
Manco Capac lived in style. We passed unchallenged 
the stone sentry boxes occupied only by the ghosts of 
the past. Into the garden, Maud, we wanted to come, with its 
trees and flowers, but we had neither invitation nor time, for 
our point of attack was the Fort on top of the hill. This pre- 
Inca prehistoric pile of stones was brought here from a far- 
away somewhere, sometime, somehow by somebody nobody 
knows much about, as proved by what they have said and writ- 
ten. The Fort of walls, three abreast, are thrown along the 
height. They are made of stones a dozen feet high, weighing 
many tons. I went up to them, around them and weighing them 
in my judgment decided they were built in a stone age, that there 
were giants in those days and they builded better than they knew. 
High-browed scholarship has suggested they were walls of a 
treasure city or were built as defense against outside enemies. 
I think some big giant made a playground enclosure for his little 
boys, for nearby are gigantic granite bump-the-bump boulders 
sloping worn and smooth as if they had slid down them for cen- 
turies. Other authorities say the Incas builded these Rodaderos. 
No matter, their descendants come here Sundays and take a 
Kelly slide. I had crashed down the Devil's slide in the Yellow- 
stone on a rock, down Cheyenne canyon on the limb of a tree, 
and with a misstep bowled down a part of the pyramid, so I was 



ee TO HELL AND BACK 

in a position to make a safe, easy descent down this cataract of 
stone. The Inca who reached the bottom first received a pot of 
gold — all I found was a handful of silver moonshine. The guide 
laughed, the moon winked and my noisy stop awoke a dog far 
away that barked as if he would like to bite me for waking 
him up. 

After this exciting trip I sat on the stone Throne of the Incas 
to cool off and felt every inch an Inca king, monarch of all I 
surveyed. There were other seats where spectators came long 
ago to worship the sun or have a good time with the sons and 
daughters of men. Had I been able to raise their ghosts I 
would have made it another Mars Hill and preached to them 
the unknown God who had made the sun they worshipped. The 
walls, seats and ruins were so flooded with silver light that if 
Beethoven had been one of our party he would have written a 
Moonlight sonata that would have put his other in the shade. 

One rock here has caused as much discussion as the Rosetta 
and philosopher's stone. It is covered with cut seats and foot- 
stools, nooks, niches, reclining couches, foot tub, bath places and 
a subway passage through which belated priests and pleasure- 
seekers might make a short-cut to the Temple of the Sun. 

Long before and since the gold craze of '49 people have been 
hunting and digging for the gold the Incas had and hid from the 
avaricious eyes of the Spaniards whose love of gold was the 
price of many a crime untold. 

THOSE INCAS 



THE Incas had a high civilization, over 10,000 feet. They 
were good road-builders and the highways have lasted 
so long, compared with ours, it would seem the con- 
tractors couldn't have slipped more than one-third of 
the funds into their pockets. They dug canals, bored tunnels and 
built terraces without horses or iron machinery ; mined gold and 
silver with copper tools hard and sharp as steel. They took 
streams and lakes of mountain water and irrigated sandy wastes, 
making a pastureland for their herds and flocks ; wheat and maize 
were raised on mountain tops now only visited by the condor. 
Their rulers were both politicians and priests, who made laws, 
imposed taxes and had a court etiquette that none should enter 
their presence except in bare feet and with a load on their shoul- 



TO HELL AND BACK 67 

ders to show allegiance. Yet they were kindly disposed and 
brought prosperity to the people they had enslaved. If wealth is 
judged by the amount of gold there were no hard times, for it 
was everywhere. They used gold for bric-a-brac ornaments and 
not for money. They worshiped gold, but in a different way from 
us. In their Temple of the Sun they made a human face of solid 
gold with gold rays slanting in every direction. When the sun 
shone on it it filled the temple room with brightness and the 
people bowed in worship. The rulers claimed to be descended 
from the sun and made the natives fall for it, but they inherited 
some of the spots of their glorious father and were guilty of 
shady transactions among the natives. The Inca had a harem 
made up of the Virgins of the Sun and the "children of the sun" 
were very numerous. 

The Incas were not perfect and when Pizarro came he made 
them less so. Dissatisfied with their civilization, he declared 
they were poor sinners and robbed them; Christless, and cruci- 
fied them ; slaves, and chained them ; impure, and seduced them, 
and after substituting indolence for industry, cowardice for valor 
and vice for virtue, made a solitude and called it peace. Then he 
wrote a good missionary report telling how he had converted the 
heathen. 

RELIGIOUS RACKETS 



THERE are many sermons in stones, but these mounds 
of mortarless masonry had very little of the instruction 
and inspiration I had found in India, Egypt, Greece and 
Rome. As commentators write strange things about 
the sacred text my guide on the way down suggested that the 
Incas had moulded or carved the seats in these rocks by using 
certain herbs that made chemical changes in the rock when 
pressed against it. He further told me that Cuzco meant 
"navel," but the descent and ascent of these stinking sewer streets 
made me think that it was named after the wrong part of the 
anatomy. The natives don't seem to mind this dismal, dirty 
dump, but a respectable skunk would be ashamed to live here. 
Cuzco's smells are her best defense. The devout Quicha crosses 
himself as he approaches Cuzco, I used my hands to hold my 
nose, passed Pizarro's house and got in to the hotel before I was 
asphyxiated. No one had broken the lock and I found wife and 



63 TO HELL AND BACK 

possessions just as I had left them hours before. I fell asleep 
and was dreaming there was no place like home when cling, 
clang, ding, dong, dang, bang, bing, jing, jang, jing went bells 
big and little. I jumped up, thinking the town was on fire and 
ran to the grated window to look for a fire escape. There was 
no escape, it was only four o'clock in the morning and the faith- 
ful were being called from sleep to service. I might have known 
as much, for it was the same thing we suffered at Lima and 
Arequipa, only on a higher and louder scale. My eyes were so 
wide open that I hurriedly dressed and went out to use them. 

It was a Feast day and hundreds of Indians were answering 
the summons of that tocsin of the soul, the church bell. I made 
the hurried rounds of a number of churches. They were crowded 
with grimy natives, gorgeous priests, greasy saints, grisly super- 
stitions and gruesome images of twisted-limbed, side-gashed, 
thorn-and-spike-pierced, blood-spattered Christs which looked as 
if they had been brought from a dissecting table or school of 
anatomy. 

These churches were chambers of horrors. The faces of the 
worshipers were pictures of mute misery and memories of the 
golden Inca past. Peru's museums had shown me its pottery 
shaped into wild grotesque features, but priestly potters had 
stamped this native clay with the marks of ignorant, supersti- 
tious, helpless despair. Their sun-worship had been eclipsed by 
the dark theology of the Middle Ages. I thought that after get- 
ting up so early, and the bells had stopped wrangling the crowded 
worshippers in the stifling air might take a religious nap, but I 
changed my mind as I came out of the door, for the janitor 
touched off a big bunch of cannon crackers that made a noise 
like an old-time Fourth. I had seen this firecracker worship and 
powder-smelling incense before the temple of the heathen Chinee 
and could easily believe that some more modern religions are but 
Christianized Paganisms. 

Leaving these poor worshippers, whose gold and government 
had been forcibly exchanged for skin diseases, superstitious 
divinity, torture and tears, I took a squint at the Sun-Temple, 
once rich with gold, now with gory inquisition relics. A church 
is now built on its ruins. I ploughed my way through acres of 
convents, watched Indians drink water from the breasts of the 
Inca woman fountain, which would be a good shrine for most 



TO HELL AND BACK 69 

milkmen ; studied the old University of law and medicine ; pitied 
the former industrious, now lazy Quichas who drown their sor- 
row in chicha. This is no three weeks or three days town and 
the more I saw the worse I felt. Sights saddened, smells sickened 
and I was glad to have the hands of my watch point to the hotel, 
urging me to lose no time in settling with the one-eyed propietor, 
while the wheels suggested the little mule car which was to carry 
us to the depot. 

A lame boy had been my guide and had humped so faithfully 
that I wanted to give him a good propina or tip. The conductor 
couldn't make change until some passengers got on and paid their 
fares, so I had to take my guiding spirit to the station. 

UP HILL 



THE engine had rested, I hadn't, so instead of being an 
orthodox tourist and making notes on what I had seen, 
I curled up in a seat of a first class car and tried to 
forget it. But uneasy lies the head that lies on the seat 
of a Cuzco train. I was more buried in dust than sleep. Yet 
this was a paradise compared with the purgatory condition of 
the second class coach where natives were crowded like pigs in 
a pen and smelled worse, as there are no sanitary conveniences. 
At different stations where they got out we were locked in by 
the conductor to keep them from robbing and infecting us. 

If the cars were bad what shall I say of the antiquated, asth- 
matic engine homely as Stephenson's model, more hampered and 
almost helpless as it tried to make the high grade ? The engineer 
should have been arrested for cruelty to animals, driving this 
old wornout iron horse uphill and with so little food and water 
that I stopped many times, got out and helped him push it over 
the Divide. I don't know how I did it, it was more mind than 
muscle over matter, maybe it was the horrible thought of sliding 
back into Cuzco. Whether it was a prayer of faith that tried to 
remove the mountain or was my getting out and walking along 
the side of the track to lighten the engine's load, it moved along 
and managed to reach the top. Then it stopped and my heart 
stood still. Then steam and gravitation combined to push it 
down and over the other side. With a sigh of relief I threw 
myself into my seat, thankful that the Lord thus far had led us 
on, and prayed that no stray llama or alpaca would give us a 



70 TO HELL AND BACK 

rear or head-on collision before we saw dear old Juliaca again, 
and the Arequipa train waiting to take us to Puno, our last Peru 
town. 

PERU— NA 

OOR Peru! bounded on the North by cannibalism, on 
the South by bigotry, on the East by the inaccessible 
Andes and on the West by rainless deserts and a har- 
borless Pacific where one lands in cages. With all her 
gold she is bankrupt and amuses herself with bullfights, lotteries 
and ruins. The old Inca civilization with its sun-worship and 
farming was preferable to some things one finds there today. Ever 
since Pizarro, that avaricious murderer, with the consent of his 
king and absolution of his church, murdered and robbed the Inca 
emperor Atahualpa, Peru has been lacking in money, mind and 
morals. The Panama Canal is her only hope to recover her nitrate 
wealth and territory from Chile, rehabilitate her army and navy, 
make her schools compare with those of Rio Janeiro and Buenos 
Aires, extend religious toleration and take her proper place among 
the South American republics. 




PUNO 



LAKE TITICACA is another anatomical named body that 
represents the high water mark (12,500 feet J of the 
Inca civilization. The train makes close connection 
with the boat at the Puno wharf, but we got off with 
the crowd at the first stop in the city. I looked around — there 
were tracks and trains, but no boat or water and no one to speak 
a word of English. As everyone who stops here at night goes 
to the hotel, it is customary for the native boys to grab your bag 
and run ahead — then you claim it on your arrival. They rushed 
towards us and I yelled, "Hang on to your bags for dear life." 
Speech and exertion were difficult at this high altitude, but we 
made vigorous use of both. "L" said some awful things in Span- 
ish and they let him alone. I smashed boys right and left with 
my handbag, while Mrs. "M," handy with her feet, barked one 
boy's shins till he howled and poked another with an umbrella till 
he doubled up. She rushed into the station office and said "Vapor, 
Lake Titicaca, La Paz." A faint look of intelligence came into 
the face of the ticket agent and he pointed in the direction of 



TO HELL AND BACK 71 

that crowd through which we had just come. Thinking he 
meant the boat was on the other side of the train, we fought our 
way back through the crowd, climbed on the platform, but as 
we tried to jump off the other side the conductor grabbed us. 
We started to struggle, then the train pulled out and he shoved 
us into the same old coach we had left a few minutes before. 
While I wondered at the next move the train stopped at the gang 
plank of our steamer, we stepped across it and in a minute the 
bell rang and the boat steamed ahead. All this swear and sweat 
because I didn't know the Spanish word for ship. Just think ! if 
we had missed this "vapor" we would have missed the Straits of 
Magellan and the Falkland Islands. 

ON LAKE TITICACA 



WHEN I boarded the boat I thought it was a launch to 
take us over to the big lake boat, but she was it, had 
come across the Andes piece by piece and had been put 
together on the lake shore. I bought a first class ticket, 
climbed down a hatchway and was ushered into our luxurious 
and commodious cabin, about two feet wide and four feet long. 
It was separated about a foot from a dumb waiter that made a 
lot of noise and so near the dining room that we only had to 
take three steps to our chairs. 

There was hardly room for anything but a washstand and I 
thought it was a mistake until I counted six bunks. There were 
only three of us, I felt grateful and said, "Thank the Lord, He 
has taken care of us," to which Mrs. "M" replied, "Well, He has 
had a hard time of it, for we have been acting like a pack of 
wild goats." Dressing in sections we were finally assembled at 
the dinner table, where I roasted the raw meat in words heard 
above the panting of the engine, but put on the soft pedal when 
the ladies opposite, whom I thought were Spanish, smiled and 
said, "You are right." On deck the cold wind whistled and we 
shivered though wrapped in coats, shawls and huddled around 
the smoke stack. It rained, thundered, lightninged, snowed and 
then the moon came out. There is a Sacred Island of the Moon 
somewhere in the lake and in the silver light every island was a 
moon island. The strange waters of this lake remove rust from 
any piece of iron placed in it and I suppose if I had taken a bath 
in it 1 wouldn't have been so rusty in my knowledge of its tra- 



72 TO HELL AND BACK 

ditions and the Inca islands. As it was, the next morning, after 
washing my face in this magic water, I remembered that my 
old friends, Adam and Eve, whose Eden I had visited in every 
part of the world, were said to have an Inca branch here on the 
Island of the Sun. The convent ruins are better preserved than 
the morals of the Virgins of the Sun who occupied them and 
there is a rock shrine at Copacabana where the Indians have 
outdone the Moslems at Mecca. 

Clouds wrapped the moon and when she turned in we did 
too. We assumed geometrical figures in undressing, squeezed into 
our bunks, wondering if the guests of Procrustes, whose legs 
were either stretched or cut off to fit their quarters, had been 
more uncomfortable than we were. The bed was too short to 
take a long sleep and although we retired late we got up early. 
The sun was shining from a cold, gray sky on gray, cold water. 
The hills around the lake were wrapped in snow-blankets the 
night had thrown round them and as the waters narrowed we 
could see little groups of huts and the shore with mud walls and 
clay-baked roofs, men paddling their balsa canoes, drifting along 
with rush sails, while hundreds of little black ducks took their 
morning swim and scores of cattle enjoyed their constitutional 
walk before breakfast on the marshy shores. There were scenes 
on ship as well as on shore. What I thought was a pilot-house 
proved to be the kitchen and cold storage where the stuff was 
taken out, cooked and shot down to the table. I watched the 
Chinese food pilot through the course of the breakfast prepara- 
tion. On the way to the bow I climbed over bags of mail, bales 
of green alfalfa and boxes of chickens and turkeys to pose for a 
picture and as the Bolivian flag was raised I saluted it. 

A RUBBER MAN 



WE were not the only ones up early or on deck. There 
was a bridal couple that hadn't slept very much; a 
Bolivian belle whose raven ringlets were tucked under 
a Panama derby with high crown and narrow rim; a 
Frenchman who had left gay Paree but hadn't forgotten his 
friskiness, and best of all, a short, broad-shouldered, grizzled- 
face, gray-eyed Scotchman who removed his pipe long enough 
to say, "Good morning, sir, this is fine, but have you seen our 
Loch Lomond?" When I told him Yes, and all the other water 



TO HELL AND BACK 73 

and land of Scotland with Burns and Scott thrown in, he said 
his name was Stewart, and gave me his hand. The fact that he 
could talk English and Spanish was of more value to me than 
any gold or silver discovery in South America. We clung to 
each other like David and Jonathan till we left Bolivia. He was 
one of the firm of the Inca Rubber Co. Business was bad and 
he was on his way home to take a good vacation. Without 
stretching it he told me the sober rubber truth from gum on the 
tree to tire on the auto. His plantation was on a forty-five 
degree mountain slope and the trails were so high and narrow 
that the men were blindfolded and the pack-mules were often 
crowded off into the valley for condor banquets. The govern- 
ment required part native help. The slow Oriental Jap and 
Chink did faster and better work than Occidental whites whose 
amorous attentions to native women had aroused the jealousy 
and hate of their brothers and husbands. He said he often spent 
two dollars to make one ; suffered lonesomeness and privation 
during the day; lay down at night to be visited by a worm that 
bored into the flesh and had to be cut out or left to metamor- 
phose. There were armies of sharpshooting insects and batal- 
lions of bats that tunneled under the toenails for blood. These 
suckers fasten themselves to a mule's ears and drink him dry 
and dead. 

Rubber help was so scarce that they didn't bounce it, but held 
it in rubber bands. He confessed there were Peruvian atrocities, 
that some accounts were exaggerated, and others like Lincoln's 
rat hole would bear looking in to. At best it was all bad enough. 

The boundary line between Peru and Bolivia is as invisible 
as the Equator. From Puno we had sailed all night on Peru's 
"Titi" and now we were here at the end of Bolivia's "Caca." 
Titicaca may not be a great lake in size, for in round numbers it 
is only 150 by 50 miles, but it is when elevated more than two 
miles above the sea. 

CLOSE CALLS 

Ol UR boat docked at Guaqui and we stepped on the shore 
J named in honor of Bolivar. The customary official 
expected, suspected and inspected us, then allowed us 
bag and baggage to go to the depot, where Mrs. "M" 
said she would be baggagemaster until the train came, instead of 



74 TO HELL AND BACK 

going to the hotel, whose inside board she feared was as flat as 
its outside architecture. 

My wife advised "L"and me not to exert ourselves, get in any- 
trouble or miss the train while we were hunting around for 
snapshots. I promised, but while a wife's advice is the best 
thing in the world it is hard for the average husband to keep it. 

There was a large shed and a tent where somebody was cook- 
ing dinner and some hungry looking, uniformly dressed men 
were walking around. I thought it was a good picture and took 
it and was quite taken back when a soldier man, some Corporal 
Trim or trim corporal, flew from the shed in a beeline and stung 
me with Spanish speech and gestures. I was doing the "non 
permisso" thing of making a photographic inventory of the bar- 
racks, fortifications and the army. Telling him "nichts ver- 
stehen," "bravissimo Bolivia," I gave him my card, which he 
could not read, and then an American flag which he understood. 
Making him believe I had made no exposure, except of my ignor- 
ance, I clutched my camera and smiled "au revoir." That was a 
lucky escape. What if I had been arrested as a spy and lost my 
kodak and my train? 

Next I went to the sedgy lake shore where there were some 
balsas, and a stock picnic of a big bull and some of his lady 
friends. I was the Rosa Bonheur to make a picture of it. I had 
just focussed the camera when Mr. B. regarded me like the 
soldier, with suspicion, and with head down and tail up rushed 
towards me. Instead of advancing towards him and explaining 
matters I made a bull-run retreat, splashing through the swamp 
until I landed high and dry out of danger. So far I had been 
an artistic failure, but farther over towards the left there was 
a mud hut and barn and an Indian woman sitting on the ground. 
I approached this venerable Bolivian Margaret with no senti- 
mental Faust intent, the dog by her side thought differently. 
Had I seen him first I wouldn't have looked in that direction at 
all, for he bristled, barked and jumped at me, determined to bite 
me then and there and everywhere he could. Using the camera 
as a shield, my umbrella as a sword and my feet as a battering 
ram I put up the most heroic dog-fight that was ever chronicled 
or might be set for a movie. The altitude was high, breathing 
difficult, but I yelled for dear life. My cry of distress was heard. 
In the Pocahontas spirit of rescue two Indian maidens rushed 



TO HELL AND BACK 75 

from the barn, armed with stones and dry cow-chips which they 
aimed at the dog but, womanlike, hit me. I had just about worn 
myself and umbrella out on this dog when "L" came up and said, 
"Hurry up, if you stay here much longer you'll miss the train." 
In desperation I gave the cur a final whack and with a fearful 
yelp he fled. Throwing a piece of money to my rescuers I 
started on a dog-trot for the depot. When I asked "L" if he got 
a good picture of the fight, he replied it was such a little dog 
and I was so big that if I showed it in a lecture slide the Humane 
Society would have me arrested. I told him it was a big dog, 
that if he hadn't stayed so far away and had been brave enough 
to help defend me he would have found I was the underdog. 

We reached the station before the train, and found the im- 
pedimenta where we had left her watching some Cholo women 
sitting in the new fallen snow making ice cream in little freezers. 
Since no one would buy it or take it as a gift they shared it with 
their children. 

Here a Mr. Fairweather, who was the traffic manager, 
clouded my hopes when he told me that the short-cut train from 
La Paz to Arica, where the Pacific boat had left my trunks, 
couldn't get me there in time to catch my boat, for the road was 
mostly on paper, a part of the treaty with Chile, and it ran or 
walked or jumped into the ditch when it felt like it. But Mr. F. 
proved there was something in a name. Clouds gave way to 
fair weather. He said I could wire and cable the boat-agent at 
Arica to put my trunks on the "Orissa" when she touched there 
and we could meet her farther down the coast at Antofagasta. 
I wrote out a message of ten words and handed it to F., who 
looked at it, laughed and said it would cost me about fifty dollars. 
He explained the tariff was so much a word and each word 
could obtain so many letters. If one word wasn't long enough 
you could combine the letters from the other words until it was. 
My overland, underwater wire and cable message was so reduced 
in length and price that I put him down as the only man in South 
America who taught me how to save any money. He wouldn't 
take anything but thanks for his kindness and only a little of 
that. He was the most American Englishman I ever met. 






76 TO HELL AND BACK 

PEACEFUL LA PAZ 

UEAVING Titicaca with its once Eden happiness and its 
traditions of the children of the sun who found the 
site of Cuzco with their magic golden rod, our train 
took us away from the strenuous scenes of the morning 
and led us up a stone step incline, by brown-breasted hills and 
ragged ranges of snow-powdered peaks to a bleak table-land on 
which a few sheep were eating. It was the top of the world, 
only not round but a broad plain and flat as some of the early 
geographers so flatly maintained. The only oasis around here was 
at Viacha, where we stopped long enough for me to lean through 
the window and take a picture of a Bolivian belle who was sell- 
ing a dry-looking sandwich and two bottles of something wet if 
not cold. Two hours more over the dusty level we halted at 
Alta, got out and looked down a thousand feet at the city of La 
Paz, peacefully nestling in the stony arms of Mother Earth and 
listening to the lullaby of a river nearby. Years ago it was a 
long, hard and dangerous wagon ride from the rim of this 
earthen bowl, in circles round its rough inside to the bottom, but 
now your coach is hitched to an electric car which makes a quick 
zigzag descent in half an hour. 

Four curly haired horses carted us from the depot over cob- 
bled streets to the Guibert Hotel. It is near the Plaza with its 
statue of Peace and the new Cathedral which is rising at the rate 
of one stone a day. Everybody literally goes up or down town 
all the time. The streets are steep as we later found the shop- 
ping prices of the stores. Wandering through the hotel's laby- 
rinth of halls and stairs we reached an arcade with a veranda 
from which we stepped into our 30x40 room. It had enough 
beds to accommodate one of the orthodox followers of Bigamous 
Young. At eight o'clock we went to "Comida" (dinner), which 
offers poor entertainment for American tastes. It is a tragedy 
of a dozen acts, unpronounceable names, unheard of culinary 
plots, long waits between acts and an epilogue of indigestion or 
epilepsy. 

Our room was cold and cheerless and as the only social place 
was a big bright bar, where people were drinking hot stuff to 
keep warm, we walked out in the moonlight to take a little exer- 
cise. It was a very little, for we breathed as if we were one- 
lungers. The only entertainment in town was the movies at pro- 




TO HELL AND BACK 77 

hibitive prices that moved the poor Indian who looked in at the 
doorway to tears. At the top of the Plaza we climbed into a 
French-like cafe, sat down to rest, listen to the music and ate 
something they called glace. Tired of promenade mountain- 
climbing we retired, thanking God for the man who invented 
sleep and that we had enough of the wealth of health to enjoy it. 

SUNDAY SHOPPERS 

T is almost worth a trip to South America to see La 
Paz on Sunday, and when we awoke it was not only 
Sunday but a Feast day and the fun was to be fast and 
furious in the attempt to serve God in the church and 
Mammon in the market. The city looked like a country fair. 
Indians who had traveled all night were squatted on the curbs 
or spread on the streets selling pretty flowers, frozen potatoes, 
peanuts, fish, meat, worsted caps, gloves and mitts. There was 
such a riot and variety of color in their dress I imagined I was 
walking between rows of tulips in a Holland garden with a 
German cheese fragrance. 

At this end of the world women do the trading. The men in 
colored wool caps, and ear muffs surmounted by a fancy straw 
lid, with bright ponchos flung over their shoulders promenade up 
and down the streets with bare feet and slit pants, not so much 
to show their legs as to make it easy to walk or climb when 
carrying heavy burdens. The proverb "Style is the man" applies 
to the women as well. The Spaniards wear high silk hats, long 
frock coats, spats, patent leathers and canes. The women are 
beautiful and wear silks, white furs, laces and jewelry. But the 
real thing in style is Miss Cholo, the half-breed. She wears as 
many skirts as she has birthdays. I observed fifteen on one 
frame. They were all the colors of the rainbow and some more. 
She had a velvet waist with lace cuff and yoke ; on her head was 
perched a Panama hat with high crown and narrow brim; a big 
blanket shawl hung from her shoulders over her arm, fastened 
with pearl and emerald pins; while her feet were encased in 
fancy canary colored kid shoes with high heels, Spanish tassels 
and stockings that came half way to her knees. Further investi- 
gation was cut short by Mrs. "M," but not until I had reached the 
conclusion that her combination of style and dress explained her 
Indian and Spanish origin. 



78 TO HELL AND BACK 

We followed the mass to the Cathedral. Inside it was behung 
with tinsel paper, gauze, spangles and banners until it looked like 
a carnival of Venice. There was a medley of music, high voices 
and throb of organ followed by the blare of a brass band that 
played something livelier than Mozart's minuet. The rich, 
dressed in their best, were crowded in the seats they had paid for ; 
the poor in their rags and reverence were crowded out into the 
aisles, suggesting the old Pharisee and Publican story. I, too, was 
a devout worshipper. I looked and listened and while others 
bowed I stood very still and hardly breathed, for "L" had his 
kodak on my shoulder and was taking a time exposure. 

I noticed the laity as well as the clergy observed certain forms 
of dress etiquette. Most of the women wore black mantas. 
Occasionally I saw a gray one, the sign that the frail fair wearer 
was doing penance. I was glad to see a fair sinner, as it broke 
the monotony of her sister's solemn black dress. 

The service ended, the band played, and a pious procession 
of grandees, half-breeds and Indians poured into the Square in 
front of and down the side streets in the sunshine like a rainbow- 
colored cascade. As if splashed up on the curb there were 
Indian women selling dyes blue, purple, red and green made from 
animal and vegetable matter. On we Went to the market with 
its little stalls where you could get chicha, custard apples and a 
fruit that looked like frog eggs; alpaca and llama wool belts, 
hand woven and dyed to hold up your pants ; caps, mitts, pon- 
chos and blankets for your own or mule's back ; toys and trink- 
ets; lace and jewelry for ornament and little round mirrors to 
see how well you look. I bought two souvenir mirrors, not to 
see my own face, but to see what was on the back-side of the 
glass. One had a picture of the Virgin Mother in modest robe, 
and the other a high-skirted, loose-dressed acting dancer who 
was not a virgin. 

Pythagoras for some reason forbade the use of beans among 
his followers, but his advice wouldn't be followed here by the 
superstitious natives who use beans for charms. They have a 
red bean with a black spot which grows on the mountains in a 
pod. They consider it both sacred and lucky. It will keep off 
the evil eye and other diseases and disasters. The beans are 
worn as ear-rings, necklaces, bracelets and pins, but you must 
be careful not to lose them or you will lose your luck. I took a 



TO HELL AND BACK 79 

chance and blew myself for several dozen. They had received 
a priestly blessing and I hoped for fair wind and tide around 
and across South America. 

After feasting our souls and eyes, our empty stomachs prayed 
our care and we hurried to the hotel, where our bill of fare was 
no longer than our Spanish vocabulary. Often our ignorance 
was bliss, for when we called for tea we couldn't get another 
thing, as that was the last thing served. In this way we avoided 
suspicious smelling soups and gristly cuts of bull meat from 
anatomical quarters neither polite nor pleasant to talk about or 
taste. 



ON TO THE DANCE 



WE didn't gorge, but remembering the Cathedral photog- 
rapher's tip to go down the mountain gorge 10 miles 
away and see a religious dance, we started for the gor- 
geous spectacle. Boarding a car, we left the town for 
the outskirts of the city. Indian women came in and crowded 
us so with their big balloon skirts that the conductor felt it neces- 
sary to give them a good slap and spank on shoulder and hip as 
a farmer does a horse in the stall to make him move over. 
Passing along eucalypti shaded avenues where people prom- 
enaded or rode on prancing horses, by villas of rich residents and 
diplomatic corps, a carrousel and circus and Protestant medical 
mission, the car stopped at the brink of a gigantic gap. Being 
neither Cholos nor goats we returned to town believing the dance 
was off and must have looked as blue as Mount Illimani in the 
distance. Turning a corner our sadness was turned to gladness, 
for I saw my old Jehu and his four curly horses and bargained 
with him to hurry us to the dance. He promised to get us down 
there in an hour, and cracking his whip started a chariot race 
over stony streets, through tree-planted avenues, beyond the end 
of the disappointing car line, down the ravine circling and thun- 
dering along the road at the base of the amphitheatre hills which 
applauded to the echo his horses' hoofs and rumbling wheels. 
Leaving groups of Indians straggling on their dusty way to the 
dance we dashed into our goal, a little Indian village. What a 
savage setting for a savage dance by savages who combine the 
savagery of their heathen religion with some semi-savage scrip- 
ture ideas ! Here we were, in a wide, deep canyon, hemmed in 




80 TO HELL AND BACK 

by mountain walls whose mineral-colored crags and peaks were 
like fantastic turrets in the setting sun. 

PIOUS ORGIES 

EFORE seeing the jumping frog savages we heard 
some "Invitation to the Dance" music. Clambering 
onto a big boulder I looked down on Indians wearing a 
felt sombrero with a barrel hoop ornament on top, great 
collars made of leopard skins around their necks, short jackets 
and pants held up by a broad fancy belt. They hopped from one 
bare foot to the other while they pounded a skin head drum or 
outblew Pan on some reed pipes. Among them were several 
devil-dressed devotees with Klux-Klux hoods and firecracker 
noses reeling around, moved by the spirits they had drunk or 
expected to get in the nearby thatched cottage where the tribe 
banner was staked. 

Driving down the white dust road we entered a village 
swarming with jumping- jack masqueraders. White plumes 
nodded on their hats, they carried live parrots on sticks swung 
over their shoulders and the wearing of the green was short 
parrot-feather skirts. They were masked as if for a ball, and 
one like a cat sprang on the back of our carriage and mewed. 
The Feast day fun grew furious as the drums and pipes sounded. 
Sweethearts looked on and women came with great glasses of 
chicha to nerve the thirsty dancers to greater effort. From every 
side street these devil-dancing Indians poured into the little 
square in front of their church, where they formed a maelstrom 
of mad humanity, swirling, singing, howling, playing, piping and 
drumming. It looked like hell or a lunatic asylum broke loose. 
One man danced his legs off and fell down unconscious ; his 
wife stripped him of his regalia, put it on her head and back and 
took his place. The center of attraction was the church door, 
where two drunken natives pulled off a kind of prize-fight. One 
big fellow as he danced around, smiled a sickly smile, doubled 
up his big fist, smashed his enemy in the face and knocked him 
rolling in the dust. By the time he had swung around the circle 
again and his victim had risen and wiped the blood from his 
nose, he uppercutted and jolted him again. This was a high, old 
hellarious time. We were quiet and had difficulty to breathe, but 
these drunken dervishes kept up this excitement until they fell 



TO HELL AND BACK 81 

down exhausted. While taking this in with open-eyed and 
mouthed astonishment an old witch of a woman came up, glared 
at us wth her red, rheumy eyes, shook her long-nailed dirty 
finger and reviled us with some vile Spanish oaths. 

NIGHT AIRS 



THIS was the last act, the curtain of dust was wrung 
down and without standing on the order of my going 
I sat back in the carriage and returned to La Paz. In 
two hours we had dusted, washed, dined and were out 
in the Plaza Mayor listening to the band which plays here every 
Sunday night. Music is the universal language, but they didn't 
play anything I could understand. Stewart said they were Boliv- 
ian airs, and since they were mostly in high keys and high notes 
I believed him. The incredible thing was that in this Bolivian 
air they could play so loud and long while we gringos gasped 
for breath. As they played, street urchins played on the base of 
the big Peace statue and boys and their girls rambled through 
plaza walks adorned with flowers, trees, shrubs and statues 
which in the night-chill offered cold comfort to warm lovers. On 
the top-side of the Square, which slanted like a lean-to shed, the 
Spanish Four Hundred met to promenade. This is the only 
street in town where people can meet on the level, and then only 
for a square long. The sidewalks on both sides were filled with 
double rows of people coming and going in opposite directions. 
They walked, talked, laughed, ogled, flirted and showed the dress, 
style, wealth and gaiety of Paris or London. And why not? 
Their dress and decorations had come from those cities' best 
stores. We fell in line, walked the short distance, turning the 
corners so often as to grow dizzy, then went to bed satisfied for 
having observed so faithfully a La Paz Sabbath. 

HIGH LIVING 

SOR breakfast we had hard rolls made of American flour 
and strong coffee to break them. To vary the bill of 
fare I ordered three soft boiled eggs which not only 
added a little to the bill of fare, but considerable to the 
expense — they were twenty-five cents apiece. Perhaps the hens 
lived where the flour came from or in the mines where they laid 
the golden eggs. I heard a street orator once say, "The price 



82 



TO HELL AND BACK 



of living is very costive," and here I paid fifty cents (gold) for 
a few sheets of paper, not stationery. I had worn out my socks 
climbing up and down this town, and my collar stretching my 
neck rubbering. I mined my pocketbook and dug up 30 cents 
(gold) for a 10 cent collar, and 80 cents (gold) for a 25 cent 
pair of socks. Luckily my hat, pants and shoes didn't wear out 
or I would have had to remain here with the poor natives, who 
go barefoot, wear a blanket for a coat and vest and two flour 
sacks for pants. 

It is always chilly in La Paz. When the sun splashes the 
Plaza with its light-waves everybody makes a dive for a sun- 
bath. I saw many mountain ranges, but not one for heating or 
cooking in any Bolivian hotel, shop, store, home or church. A 
millionaire can toast his shins before a grate of Australian coal 
at forty or fifty dollars a ton, while the poor man would freeze 
if it were not for the llamas which go through the streets and at 
his very door deposit briquettes of compost. We saw llama- 
trains in the mountains carrying silver, but here the dung-bearing 
llama is the poor man's warmest friend. And why shouldn't he 
be poor if he can only make from 25 to 50 cents a day, with no 
ambition to skilled labor which is fortunate to get $1.50 a day? 
It costs a man's life earnings to die and be buried in a decent 
coffin, with no outside bog in the grave unless a piano one, for 
lumber costs about fifty dollars a thousand feet. Even the rail- 
roads, which are supposed to have money to burn, use iron cross 
ties and rails for telegraph poles. 

But I saw an exception to the class, poor in life and death, at 
the burial of a high official. The Plaza band played a funeral 
march, the hearse was decked with black plumes, and a guard of 
honor and body of soldiers followed with trailed arms. The 
church was decorated with lights and flags and the rich casket 
was placed on an elevation and guarded. This building with its 
stereotyped form of architecture and worship was not as inter- 
esting to me as the old, new Cathedral, started so long ago that 
the early architects and builders must be dead. Instead of being 
up-to-date it will be out-of-date long before completed. Once a 
day three men push a little flat car, loaded with a big stone, up 
the hilly streets, on a one-foot track from the quarry. The stone 
is taken across the Plaza and through the big church door to be 
cut and placed in position. I believe they could bring another 



TO HELL AND BACK 83 

stone a day if they wanted to, but I am sure they never will, for 
the church has worked the government for the graft of a ten per 
cent tax on all the goods brought across Lake Titicaca and it is 
to be collected so long as the building remains unfinished. 

The nights were moonlit and if I could only have seen them 
I suppose there were shivering ghosts wandering about this un- 
finished Cathedral wondering why their prayers and alms had so 
long been in vain. 

A DOOR OF HELL 



SPEAKING of religion reminds me of what a Methodist 
told me to be sure and see here. I did. Just off from 
the sidewalk, at the back of a church, a hole is cut in a 
door, with a box on the inside as a little crib or cradle 
for your bastard babies. The unnatural father or mother has 
only to sneak up to this door at night, drop the child like a letter 
in a mail box, ring the bell and run away. Doubtless this male 
and female baby box is as well patronized as the one in Arequipa 
that has flourished for centuries and still receives the support 
of the state lottery. By their Dead Sea and Sodom fruit ye 
shall know them. Enforced celibacy against Bible command 
and early church history, and a church marriage fee so high as 
to be practically prohibitive, have placed a premium on parental 
dishonor and neglect. This is a shocking state of affairs but up 
here a commonplace thing and of long standing among a people 
whose religion has removed every vestige of moral sense. When 
they want to get rid of the shame and support of their illegiti- 
mate children they think no more of dumping the little sufferer 
into this box or barrel than we do of leaving an unwelcome kit- 
ten or puppy in some neighbor's back yard. While I was poking 
around this hell-hole a number of curious old women came up 
as if they thought the kodak I held under my coat was a persona 
non grata I was trying to slip over to the care of the sisters. 
If it be argued that it is well for deserted children to be cared 
for it may also be said if there were no such place there would 
be no such desertions. 

The church which runs such a branch hell of an institution 
used to receive the big and only donations of money from the 
state for missionary work in the city and among the depraved 
Indians. Now it receives less than $100,000 a year because 




84 TO HELL AND BACK 

appropriations are made for American churches and schools 
whose open Bible and books make clean Christians and good citi- 
zens. 

Thank God some of these clerical abuses had been abolished 
just before my visit. Laws had been passed that nothing but a 
civil marriage was legal, it must precede any religious wedding 
service and the clergy who did differently would be arrested as 
common law breakers; that the Corpus Christi procession must 
march out of La Paz and not come back again ; that the church 
cemeteries, which had done a land office business in holy real 
estate for none but the faithful, were no longer to be in the 
hands of the priests but put, kept and run under state control. 

DEAD HEADS 

WASN'T invited to the palace to eat with the presi- 
dent and if the dining room interior was not more at- 
tractive than the exterior I didn't miss much. No con- 
gressman asked me to occupy his seat in the Capitol 
with its tall tower and big clock, but I was invited to something 
more interesting and instructive, — the Museum and its pro- 
fessor. 

The place was small but big with interest and during the 
hour I was there he showed me specimens of Bolivia's animal, 
vegetable and mineral kingdom, told me the history of the coun- 
try and described its races and archaeology with scholarship, 
simplicity and sincerity. Outside of the commercial exhibits 
there were old curiosity shop rooms littered with Inca pottery, 
relics from buried cities, odd-shaped baskets woven by Titicaca 
islanders, Indian dug-outs, poisoned spears of savages, jars of 
wiggley, wicked looking snakes, shelves of images with their 
stony stare, corners filled with rope-wrapped mummies that sat 
holding their misshapen skulls in their fleshless hands, while their 
bony elbows rested on their knees and their shins and shanks 
were drawn together like blades of a jack knife. This ghastly 
mummy congregation was evidently listening to a sermon by 
Death from the text "All is vanity," "Dust thou art and unto 
dust thou shalt return." Passing through a room of martyred 
spiders and St. Sebastian butterflies stuck full of pins we entered 
a little compartment where the professor had reserved his last 
and biggest surprise. He opened a dusty glass case and brought 




&i 



TO HELL AND BACK 85 

out a woman's head shrunk to the size of a china doll's, introduc- 
ing her as the wife of some old Ecuador chief. I tenderly 
stroked her long black glossy hair, fascinatedly gazed at her 
closed eye lids, whose lashes were threads that sewed them shut, 
but did not have the heart to kiss the pouting pursed up lips 
which were skewered and tied with strings like a beef-roast 
in a butcher shop. It was growing dark. I wanted to sleep 
some that night and so thanked the kind professor who said 
he hoped to see us next morning at the buried city of Tia- 
huanaco where he expected to hunt up some more of its long 
retired citizens. 



A PREHISTORIC MAN 



WE caught the early electric car. Women in the outskirts 
were washing their skirts in the river and hanging them 
to dry on bushes which suddenly bloomed with all the 
color of a Java garden. At the top of the bowl we 
drank in the view of the city below with its white walls, red 
roofs, cultivated terraces, the bare brown level around, and the 
white and purple morning glory peaks above. 

In two hours we reached Tiahuanaco. "L" and I were the only 
ones to get off and would have been lonesome and lost had it 
not been for our Fairweather friend who had wired the station 
agent of our coming visit. A little Indian fellow ran up to meet 
us. He had long hair, a long face and long pants turned up over 
his brown ankles. Pointing across the plain, he beckoned us to 
follow. 

First we were introduced to the oldest settler who had been 
here for centuries. He did not extend his hands but kept them 
tightly wrapped around his bosom as if to keep warm and hold 
himself together, and he cast a look of petrified astonishment 
on us from his stony eyes. His face was wrinkled and scarred. 
He had been through some Bolivian wars, and like his far away 
Sphynx relative had been made a target by brutal soldiers who 
had no respect for age. He looked so kind and dignified I ven- 
tured a few questions : "Do you speak English ? Who are you ? 
How old? Was your mother good? Your father kind? What 
was his business ? Did you help around the house or in the store ? 
Did you get in early Saturday nights, or stay out late and try 
to make good by going to church in the morning? How long 



86 TO HELL AND BACK 

have you lived here? Are you Inca or pre-Inca? How do you 
stand this high altitude? What are all these ruins around here 
and what ruined them? Earthquakes, war, time?" No answer. 
He was deaf and didn't hear, or obstinate and wouldn't reply, or 
paralyzed and couldn't talk, or too modest to talk about himself. 

Perhaps he thought I belonged to the profession of letters and 
lies, an author or newspaper reporter, who would talk him to 
death with confidential interviews and then go home to misstate 
what he said, say things he didn't utter and tell as fact a lot of 
fairy stories and traveler's tales he never dreamed of. 

The boy was growing impatient and as he pulled me away 
I said to my stone dumb friend, "Good bye old boy, take care 
of yourself. May you live long and prosper. Time's hand has 
dealt gently with you but look out for the rough hand of the 
relic hunter." 



THE ETERNAL CITY 



THE guide, whom I had dubbed Post-Inca, led me up 
and down, around, over and across the ruins of this 
most ancient and least known city in the world. I 
crawled through the stone slab gateway carved with 
human and animal heads. Serious scientists, heavy historians 
and dark-as-ink doctors tell us they symbolize pre-Inca royalty 
and religion but they looked more to me like funny pictures 
some naughty boys centuries ago had scratched, cut and carved 
on their neighbor's gate. Tired, we climbed some giant sand- 
stone stairs, propped by pillars at either end, and sat down on a 
step, thirty by fifteen feet. The dust lay thick on the threshold 
now swept only by the shiftless janitor of the wind. Whether 
this was the entrance to the Sun Temple or not I took a sun bath 
and calling Post-Inca, arose, clasped his hand and bridged past 
and present with reverent feeling. 

We crossed through the dirty little village, where every dirty 
little house had a dirty little cross stuck in its mud and thatch 
to show its faith or fear, much as we place lightning rods on our 
housetops. Passing by herds of cattle we saw the professor in 
the distance digging up some Inca Yorick skull and bringing to 
light the family skeleton of some long closed closet. Finally we 
stumbled into a quarry of stones, round, square, oblong, rough, 
smooth and decorated with raised or sunk designs that looked 



TO HELL AND BACK 87 

like a Chinese puzzle, giant baby's building blocks or Masonic 
emblems. 

Were these the ruins of some Babel tower whose ambitious 
builders thought that with a 13,000 foot foundation they could 
scale the skies, or of a wicked city an earthquake had tried to 
shake the devil out of? I don't know, but I learned that many 
of the stones had been carted away for railroad ballast and 
bridges or used as foundations for houses and churches here 
and in La Paz, just as the pyramids were mined to build the 
Citadel. By the railroad track I met three monolithic hobos 
acting as if they were beating it for the next town. To speak 
seriously like a professor of archaeology, it is presumable that 
these figures had been erected by a farmer in some stone age as 
scarecrows to frighten the condors from his corn patch. They 
were delighted to have their pictures taken and stood perfectly 
still, but the natives I tried to get in the fields spinning, herding 
stock or making red mud bricks, jumped walls, slid down roofs 
and acted like unsociable mice when a cat comes to make them a 
friendly visit. 

Hungry and tired, with feelings of stone bruises, scratches 
and dreary desolation that was worse than anything I had suf- 
fered in Rome, Athens, Karnak, Delhi and Pegu, I headed for 
the station followed by an Indian who tried to sell me the skull 
of his very great grandfather and specimens of pottery which 
had been used by his very great and gracious grandmother. 

The station master waited to see if we had smuggled any 
relics and ruins or kidnapped the old settler, and as if he were 
morally responsible for our safe return to La Paz by the train 
due in fifteen minutes. 

TIAHUANACO CHEESE 



HAGGARD Indian hags were squatting around on the 
platform trying to sell something to hungry and thirsty 
passengers. It was a safe chance to buy oranges to 
wash down the Inca dust but the bread felt suspiciously 
warm, either from llama fuel fire or the heat of their Indian 
bodies. While it was less hard than the round about stones it 
was dirtier but sauced with hunger it tasted good. Seeing my 
boldness of attack on orange and bread they uncovered some gray 
and white pancake shaped stuff about five inches in diameter and 



88 TO HELL AND BACK 

one inch thick. I didn't know what it was and they couldn't tell 
me so I held out a piece of money in one hand and they pitched 
one of the quoits into the other. Shades of Switzerland ! It was 
goat's cheese. I have eaten limburger up to concert pitch in 
musical Germany ; tasted gorgonzola which fat white worms were 
moulding and carving in artistic Italy ; made a Paris sewer of my 
stomach with French debris; choked on a chunk of unholy 
camel's milk cheese in the Holy City, but this cake of old Tia- 
huanaco goat's cheese, rough enough with goat's hair to need 
a shave and mixed with curd, slime, salt and barnyard sweep- 
ings, took the prize and left the strongest impression. "L" and I 
ate a little and were satisfied. That the fragments might not be 
lost we gave them to Post-Inca who had been brought up on it. 
He started away as if that were his pay. I called him back and 
gave him a piece of money to buy a lot more or something worse 
if he could find it. 

Three hours later in my room at La Paz I wrote in my diary, 
"Tiahuanaco — old town, old man, old ruins, old cheese, a fine 
old time." 

BARBARIANS 

NTENDING to leave next morning for Antofagasta 
where I was to get the "Orissa" and my trunks, I ran 
across the plaza and trotted up three flights of stairs to 
the railroad office. Here I astonished the young Eng- 
lish ticket seller by saying, "I want three tickets for Afghanistan 
where I am to put the 'Orissa' on my trunk." He thought I was 
an escaped lunatic and acted as if he wanted to jump out of the 
window or brain me with a paper weight. But I was harmless, 
not even drunk, only out of breath. So he laughed and told me 
what I meant to say, showed me into an office and asked the 
Spaniard to give me the tickets I wanted in exchange for the gold 
he wanted. Mine was good British gold from the La Paz bank 
where I had cashed American checks and he tossed it in with 
the yellow pile on his desk. 

It was time for a hair cut and shave or I would resemble the 
goat cheese I had eaten that morning, so I went into the Plaza 
barber shop. It was full and I whiled my time away until the 
barber said something like "next." I pointed to the razor and 
my face, to the scissors and my head — he wanted to shave my 




TO HELL AND BACK 89 

head and cut my face. During the half hour he did both, cut- 
ting my hair in front above my ears and shaving my neck behind 
until it almost touched the bald spot on top. He paused with 
admiration for approval. I looked in the glass and if any monk 
or monkey ever looked half as silly or sinful I would like to 
see them. But there was no great loss without some gain. 
Once in my life I had been barbered in a silence which did not 
ask if I would have a shampoo, bay rum, my hair singed or my 
shoes shined. When I went out the cold air struck me in the 
back of the neck like a snowball and I hurried to my room to 
find a high collor. 

Dressed in my tuxedo best I led Mrs. "M" and "L" in the 
grand march down the grand stair case towards the dining hall. 
There I was confronted by the Spaniard from the railroad office 
who in a most spectacular way held out a handful of gold, picked 
a piece from it, bit it, shook his head and threw it on the floor 
with a gesture that meant it was no good. The hotel proprietor 
and many of the guests eyed me as if I were a bald-headed, 
bold-faced criminal counterfeiter. I know I looked the part 
for I had glimpsed myself in the barber shop mirror. Things 
are not what they seem and with conscious honesty I stooped 
down, picked up the gold piece and said, "Good." He shook 
his head "No." I shook my fist "Yes." Then he gestured me 
to go back to his office but when I remembered those three 
flights of stairs I said "Not on your life." He started to get 
the hotel police but the jolly young Englishman who had in- 
troduced me to him in the afternoon and had been drinking a 
glass of porter while watching this tragic dialogue, stepped up, 
begged my pardon, asked to see the money, examined it through 
his eye-glass, weighed it in his hand, bit it with his gold tooth, 
and said it was all right and he would give another in exchange 
for it was only a little thin and nicked because it had been used 
as a charm. This is another illustration of the friendly hand 
of an Englishman to an American across the sea or over the 
mountain. All's well that ends well. I tipped the waiter and 
paid the proprietor, but would you believe it, evil communications 
had corrupted their good manners for each of them sharpened 
their teeth on my gold as if they hoped for the best but feared 
for the worst. It was early to bed and early to rise to get the 
only train that would hustle us to the boat, yet I almost missed 




9Q TO HELL AND BACK 

it. After breakfast when I had packed my trunk, the fool room 
servant supposing I had gone, locked me in the lavatory. I 
called and kicked and when he didn't come I broke the door, 
met the members of my wondering family, jumped on the street 
car and just caught my train. 

MIRAGES 

N reaching the rim I looked down for the last time on 
La Paz where the earth had opened her mouth and 
swallowed the inhabitants. Though the city is 1,500 
feet below the plain her ideals are on a high plane 
compared with some other cities down here. Forgetting the bad 
past she has pressed to the high mark of a better future and 
will continue to learn the lesson of Liberty so long as she sits 
at the feet of that inspiring teacher, Mt. Illimani. 

Again crossing the bare, brown plateau we came to Viacha. 
Here we changed cars for the de luxe diner and sleeper that 
were to take us to Antofagasta, the dirtiest town in South 
America. The whirring wheels rolled us by grassy plains, 
sedgy swamps, black hills, mud villages and miraculous mirages. 
The train window framed their shimmering surfaces, dotted with 
tiny islands and bays and fringed with fairy ferns and forests. 
For hours we rode by this distant phantom scenery more enchant- 
ing than anything I had ever seen in the desert wastes of Arizona 
or the Straits of Messina. Yet it was of such stuff as dreams are 
made of, a country from whose bourne no traveler returns. Its 
rippling waters are only sand and salt and the beautiful blue 
waves that glittered and glassed themselves in the sun are but 
clouds of dazzling dust — its New Jerusalem heaps of sand. 
There are sermons in sand as well as stone and as there was 
nothing else to do I Morrillized on life's mirages which "leave 
grief and pain for promised joy." 

Money is a mirage. It is potent but not omnipotent ; it buys 
books but not brains, plenty but not peace, luxury but not life, 
flatterers but not friends. 

Vice is a mirage. The debauched woman and drunken man 
have learned that sin makes promise of pleasure to the ear and 
breaks it to the heart; that apples of Sodom turn to dust and 
ashes on the lips, and Satan is a liar who plucks the rose only to 
leave the thorn of disease, despair and death. 



TO HELL AND BACK 91 



ORURO TINTS 



THE engine whistle cut short my musing and looking 
out of the window I saw the little mining town of 
Oruro. The hills back of it were never meant to 
illustrate the poem "Over the Hills to the Poor House" 
because they are rich in silver, copper and tin. 

The town has less than 10,000 inhabitants but was dirty 
enough to represent a million. I went to the place called a 
hotel. I called it something else. If the dust the Indians and 
llamas had kicked up was bad, it was dry and clean compared 
with my room and the kitchen next to it. The meat, vegetables 
and food were on the floor where there was grease enough to 
cook them without placing them in a skillet with lard. This 
was the land of tin and borax yet I looked in vain for a wash 
basin and a piece of soap. Thankful that our stop was only 
between trains and that we didn't have to eat or sleep here we 
dodged through the bar, welcomed the street with its fresh air 
and dust, and went straight to the Plaza. The town streets are 
all straight and narrow but from the saloons and dives one 
sees they are about the only straight and narrow ways the 
inhabitants walk in. As homely people paint their faces and 
beflower their hair in order to look attractive, so these squatty 
houses of sun-dried and rudely plastered brick are decorated 
with red, yellow and blue colors and their window-boxes filled 
with bright flowers. 

There was an iron mountain in the center of the Plaza with 
artistic animals balanced on the rim. Boys and girls came and 
went loaded with water. This scene made me thirsty, but not 
for water, so I went in a saloon and ordered lemonade. I paid 
for it and received lead change. I took another glass and re- 
turned the plugged silver. 

Among the other spiritual consolations of the Plaza was a 
little church. No tintinnabulation of the silver bells called me 
in this silver and tin town, but there was a big unhung bell 
standing in the corner of the churchyard that looked as forsaken 
as the one at Moscow. It seemed too big to be hung, of no prac- 
tical use and of less value than its humble brother in the belfry 
which called to service. Passing the Arcade and Government 
building I did hear a sweet-voiced belle and looking up saw 
the senorita whose hand I had wrung in farewell on ship board 



92 TO HELL AND BACK 

a few days before. Not knowing she was a wedding belle, I 
glanced up, smiled and said some sweet things in English. Her 
voice rang out in a Spanish reply which told me something I 
didn't understand, and for fear some listener might, Mrs. "M" 
pulled me to one side telling me to ring off and come to the 
station. Sad as it was to. leave the Spanish lady it was sadder 
to wander through dusty streets only sprinkled by the llamas 
and inhabitants, and saddest of all was it to leave my Scotch 
Fidus Achates, Mr. Stewart, who had been my interpreter and 
friend. That parting might be sweet with no sorrow he bought 
me some Indian reed pipes and tried to play the Highland fling 
for me to dance; an Oruro newspaper, like many of ours, no 
news, all "ads" at so much per line; and a Scotch highball to 
cheer my spirits. 

A LIVE MARTYR 



WE changed the broad gauge road for a narrow one 
of two and one-half feet, our day coach for a com- 
partment sleeper and Stewart the rubber man for Pen- 
zotti, the reverend missionary, who shared our four- 
berth compartment. I had been introduced to him at La Paz 
but now we were literally thrown together. He spoke English 
and I was glad to listen. He was born in South America, was 
early converted to Protestantism and believed in an open 
Bible, which he circulated and in a Gospel which he preached 
from town to town. In Peru he was persecuted and thrown 
in jail. That was years ago. There was no religious liberty 
then and the church was the Bastile of Thought for all who 
didn't say or pray her way. He said if it had not been for the 
influence of friends working through our Secretary of State, 
James G. Blaine, he would have still been in prison. He had 
sent his children to North America to be educated and believed 
the day was approaching when all the civilizing Christian influ- 
ences of North America would spread to South America; when 
their government would stand firm on a Bible, no longer under 
the lock and key of any one's private interpretation; when the 
public school would not teach ignorance was the mother of de- 
votion, but that a knowledge of this world and its history was 
the right of every child born ; when there would be a public press 
whose editors believed something and were not afraid to say it 



T0 HELL AND BACK 93 

and when the devil-marriage of church and state would be utterly 
divorced. Under this last head of incestuous union he spoke of 
the woeful illiteracy and wicked illegitimacy of South America ; 
of wifeless and husbandless fathers and mothers; of children 
who called their confessors "father" which they were in nature 
as well as in name ; of sins that shamed Sodom ; of cruelty that 
harked back to Nero and of robbery that would have made 
Pizarro envious. I learned a choice morsel of church history. 
In an interior town of Bolivia a suspicious husband, supposed to 
be away, suddenly returned, broke in the door of his bedroom 
and found a priest. Knowing there was no excuse or explana- 
tion he was about to kill him when his wife threw herself at 
his feet and cried, "Stop, you must not kill the father of your 
children." 

From the names of the lakes of Bolivia one would think they 
were sewers. We had crossed Titicaca and were now passing 
Poopo, shallow, salt and full of little smelt-like fish. 

I came from the diner to our sleeper to find altitude and 
quinine were too much for Mrs. "M" and they had laid her out 
gasping like a fish. Grabbing a pillow I threw it down, put my 
knees on it and took her hand to feel her pulse. Just then Rev. 
Penzotti entered, saw me on my knees and supposing it was time 
for prayers, went over to his couch, knelt down and remained in a 
pious posture, not rising until I did. Mrs. "M" saw all this and 
nearly died with laughter and I guess it was this more than the 
medicine that revived her. That night he told me it was a 
great comfort to feel that we couldn't travel so far from God 
as not to speak to Him in prayer. I said "Yes" but didn't tell 
him that when he thought he kneeled with me in prayer I was 
doing something else. 

AN INDIAN ENCAMPMENT 



FOUR A. M. found me reaching around for some bed 
clothes to keep warm, but even then there was no rest 
for during the night the train had taken on a mob of 
Indians at Rio Mulato who had come down from 
Potosi. They filled every coach and overflowed the aisle of the 
sleeper to the very threshold of our compartment. The women 
talked, the babies cried and all grunted, moving and crowding 
like the frogs and lice of Egypt. We had to bolt the door to 



94 TO HELL AND BACK 

keep them from coming in our beds. I told Penzotti we were 
prisoners but he smiled and said, "I show you." With a polite 
"permisso un momento" he trod on them and over them to the 
lavatory and diner. "L" and I followed echoing his "permisso." 
The natives didn't care either because they hadn't paid a sleeper- 
fare or what is more probable, they were used to being down- 
trodden. The Indians seemed as insensible as wooden ones 
before cigar stores. Too early for breakfast, they were hav- 
ing their morning coca, their food and drink, solace and support. 
Coca and chicha are the Nepenthe and Lethe in which they 
drown the memories of their sad past and the sadder present of 
slaving in mine, rubber forest, cattle field and railroad camp. 

As the school girl chews gum, the Southerner tobacco and 
the Javanese the betel nut so the South American Indian chews 
his coca leaf mixed with a little clay. It is ' picked from the 
shrub which grows at the foot of the Andes in Peru and Bolivia. 
He will work harder and walk further with a little roll of coca 
leaves than a harvest hand on four big meals a day. 



SILVER LININGS 



THEY got off at Uyuni, a little Indian town of 5,000, 
with dirty mud houses on the two sides of four broad 
ways. It was a short stop but long enough to see a 
train of llamas loaded with silver from the Potosi 
mines, some empty mule-carts and our fellow Indian passengers 
squatting here and there or striking out for the nearest saloon, 
comfort or pleasure resort. In the little station I saw enough 
silver to furnish half a dozen mints. It was packed in green 
hides which had dried and held it tight. They loaded it into our 
baggage car like so much sugar or salt and there was no free 
silver for politician or train-robber as it was all weighed, marked 
and heavily guarded. 

It is queer that the old navigators and explorers who came 
to South America in search of El Dorado couldn't find it, for 
there are solid mountains of gold and silver. Times have changed 
since Candide was here. He saw children playing in the streets 
with nuggets of gold instead of stones and when he left a pack 
of llamas was given him laden with gold. Now they throw 
stones at you unless you dig up the nuggets from your pockets 
and you find the llamas waiting to bank your hotel bill. 



TO HELL AND BACK 95 

For hours we pilgrimaged across this table-land desert, dry 
as a sermon or a traveler's description of it. It was only enliv- 
ened by a stop just before we reached the Chilean border where 
I stumbled against a little fat man and begged his pardon. He 
looked at me and at the lapel of my coat, I did at him and at 
the lapel of his coat. The cloth and the style of our garments 
were different but each of us wore a button that was alike. All 
we could do was to speak to each other in sign language, and 
clasp our hands in a Masonic grip. This meeting on the 12,000- 
foot level and parting on the square could only be measured by 
time and space. 

The desert was dry, so was a young Englishman who sat next 
to me at the table. 

CELEBRATING 



T 



HE empty bottles before him represented most of the 
countries of the world, including one from America 
which he asked me to share. My polite refusal with a 
reason led him to explanation and excuse. He said 
the country was god-forsaken, there was no society, nothing else 
fit to drink, all there was was women and whisky and while he 
wanted to be good and had promised his mother he would be 
good, he intended to get off at Calama that night where the 
Chileans were celebrating, get drunk and go to a sporting house. 
If any one insulted him he would get him with a gun, fix it up 
with the police authorities and get away. Poor fellow, poor 
fool and like him all the rest who leave God, home and native 
land for South America and lie in the lap of the Devil and 
expecting to escape unharmed. 

At the Bolivian and Chilean boundary stands the giant senti- 
nel Ollague 20,000 feet tall and always smoking. I paid him a 
descriptive compliment, said he was a good smoker so that with- 
out asking to see my passport he let us by unchallenged. We 
skirted a borax lake, the color of ice and snow, and I wanted to 
skate on it. Later we stopped at a larger one where it would 
take more than a twelve-mule borax team a century of centuries 
to haul away. I ran down to the shore and picked up a pure 
white chunk as big as my two fists, and when I thought of its 
cleansing and medicinal virtues, and how much it was needed 
here I was sorry any of it was shipped away to other parts of 



96 TO HELL AND BACK 

the world. I saw factory chimney smoke and since there is no 
smoke without fuel I asked what they burned and learned it was 
that same yareta which I had seen in Peru and Bolivia. It re- 
minded me of those old pine stumps I used to dig up in New 
York on my uncle's farm. It is in the class of the other tough 
people and things that thrive in this country. I had seen it 
stacked like rocks at the stations after it had been dug out of the 
ground with shovel and pickaxe. It looks like a big overgrown 
cabbage and burns like a pine knot. Here it was being shot down 
from a mountain top on a wire cable car to the factory by the 
lake. 

We were in Chile and it was the 17th of September when 
she begins a three days' celebration of her independence. It 
seemed as if Nature joined with human nature in celebrating, 
for her volcanoes were belching smoke, the hills were arrayed 
in red metallic dress of yellow, orange and purple and proudly 
and humanly admired their gorgeous appearance in mirror lakes. 
We crossed the Ascotan pass at 13,000 feet and passed the two 
volcanoes, San Pedro and San Pablo. They are tall, majestic 
and hoary like their great namesakes. As Saint Peter was more 
demonstrative with swearing tongue than Saint Paul, so the 
mountain which bears his name flames and fumes, smokes and 
steams by the side of the silent San Pablo. Like the thirsty 
traveler who thinks of the refreshing drink at the end of his 
journey we were reminded of the non-poisonous water at An- 
tofagasta, for at San Pedro station there were native rock reser- 
voirs holding pure mountain spring water piped nearly 200 miles 
to the tune of $5,000,000. This fresh water not only supplies 
the two or three prohibitionists of Antofagasta, but makes steam 
for the railroad and the nitrate field factories. Down went the 
sun behind the mountains, and down we went leaving moun- 
tains and sun behind until our train slowed up, and like a 
frightened caterpillar crawled over the Loa viaduct, the highest 
in the world, 336 feet above the rushing Loa river. 

Water is to earth what blood is to man, a sign of life, and 
leaving the dead desert behind we came through an oasis of farm 
and pasture land to Calama, a copper mining center from the 
time of the Incas. All the "coppers" must have been in the 
mountain for at the station one fellow who had been celebrating 
lay apparently dead with a broken skull, and there were a lot of 



TO HELL AND BACK 97 

other dead drunks walking and talking around in a state of in- 
toxication not wholly induced by the altitude. Here my English 
friend, who had been off most of the afternoon, got off. He 
came up to bid me good-bye with a God bless you, which he 

soon exchanged for a G — d you for somebody who got in 

his way. 

It was night but the old town was light and they were hav- 
ing a Chile sauce time. Many lanterns made it look like a Jap- 
anese village, the brass band sounded as if the instruments were 
full of chicha which they sucked up and blew out in discordant 
notes. Men and women were having a free and easy time in 
celebrating their freedom. In front of the little Roman Catholic 
church Roman candles were spluttering and shooting with a 
happy abandon that meant a burned face or eyeless socket for 
somebody. This sight and sound of revelry by night was a good 
beginning for a three days' debauch when some of the most im- 
portant of the Ten Commandments are wholly forgotten. 

At midnight I went to bed. The train rumbled through the 
nitrate beds where lie Chile's resources more valuable than silver 
and copper and where mind and soul lie asleep in dreams of 
dusty dollars. Nitrate is salt petre, used to make the noise and 
smell in patriotic celebration, and a fertilizer that has backed the 
barnyard deposit way off the ox-cart boards. The world's ships 
dump their products here and cart away the nitrate from Chile's 
big barnyard. O for some medicinal chemist, in his official 
laboratory to prepare a powder which South Americans could 
take internally instead of spreading it on the ground or ramming 
it in a gun. She needs to fertilize mental and moral grounds 
long a desert waste. 

ANTOFAGASTA 

XENOPHON'S men cried "Thalatta" when they saw the 
sea and when early next morning I looked out of the 
window and saw the Pacific I said 'Thank God." I 
was as happy to get down from the heights as once I 
had been to make a safe voyage to terra firma after sailing in the 
clouds of a captive balloon. Giving my yap of a porter a 
"yappa," or tip, for our pains, not his, and a God bless you hand- 
clasp to Penzotti I wandered through the big depot till a runner 
for the "English hotel" spotted us as strangers and took us in. 



98 TO HELL AND BACK 

After London experiences there wasn't much to remind me of 
an English hotel except the name, the proprietor, bar and an 
ex-Londoner. He was a real man, a Masonic brother and charm- 
ing companion. His had been an eventful life. As I looked at 
his armless sleeve, he said, "Silver mines and collecting old 
church pictures have nearly been my death." Then he took us 
up to his balcony room, showed us a wealth of curios and pic- 
tures and told us their history, which leads me to say that instead 
of burying himself way down here he should enter the lecture 
field. 

In the streets most of the 20,000 inhabitants were celebrating 
and it was so early I concluded they had been at it all night. To 
get the lay of the land we took a rubberneck mule car, more 
primitive than anything seen in old Missouri, and raced across 
and around the town with frequent relays of mules. Every little 
house and store floated a flag, every occupant or owner wore a 
badge and were headed for the Plaza and parade in their Sun- 
day best. We followed suit. Every other building looked like 
a dive or saloon. Without going in to investigate we hurried to 
the Plaza. It was festooned with flags, branches and banners. 
The big English clock in the center with smiling open face and 
extended hands wished the merry mob a good time. Carriages 
and autos were decorated, people threw confetti and the fire- 
department made a run. An ex-fire horse hitched to a fancy rig 
tried to beat his old engine companions and made the hit of the 
morning by smashing the carriage and spilling its occupants. 
We had only come to Antofagasta to get away from it and no 
matter what entertainment the celebrating little town offered, we 
went again and again to the wharf to see if our ship had come in. 

This is a dry town, the dust was inches thick, it never rains, 
but the alcoholic drinks poured in and the measure of the Chil- 
ean's patriotism seemed to be indicated by the number of bottles 
and glasses he emptied. Everybody was drier than the fish the 
fish-mongers carried on poles and hawked through the streets. 
I was dry, too, but could only wet my whistle by blowing in 
dirty Chile money for ice-cream that didn't look much cleaner 
and tasted like half frozen hair-oil. 



TO HELL AND BACK 99 

A SAIL AT LAST 



THE big rocks and waves along this coast that spell ship- 
wreck were fewer than the lost souls I met along the 
water front who had made shipwreck against the rocks 
of drink, gambling and vice. 

At last what seemed a cloud was smoke, a log a boat, and 
the "Orissa" anchored two miles from shore. I was happy as 
the Chileans and shaking off the dust of Antofagasta from my 
feet I turned my back on the high rocks that advertised various 
fire-waters, went to the pier, and dickered with the pirates to 
row us over to the ship. We had prayed for a still sea, because 
the waves are so high here that it is often impossible to embark 
at all and you have to take a train miles to another harbor. Our 
prayers were answered, the waves were only fifteen feet high. 
As our rowboat pulled out the big friendly seals which act as 
scavengers came near our boat, blubbered bye-bye and sank out 
of sight. We would have done the same thing if it hadn't been 
for the skillful oarsmen who piloted us through mountain waves. 
They are able to row a barge loaded with tons of freight and 
bring it safely ashore through the surf. I was the first to grab 
the rope and pulled myself on the gang. "L" and my wife were 
good acrobats and followed. If she had been hobbled with a tight 
skirt it would have been a loose and split one. Others came 
aboard, but were less fortunate and were as wet from head to 
foot as if they had swum from shore, been swept out of their 
boats, or had been punished with the ducking stool for remon- 
strating with the price the pirate rowers had charged them. 

Our boat was an ancient craft, but more steady and safe 
than some of the new fast set that turned up their prow at us 
and gave us the go-by. The officers of bridge, deck, cabin and 
saloon were the best specimens of Britannia's men who ruled 
the waves and as genial, kind and companionable to the passen- 
gers as if we were members of one common family. The perils 
of the deep were welcome compared with those of the land and 
with a hot bath, some clean clothes, water to drink, a steamer 
chair and a book we were prepared to receive any visit Neptune 
might make. 




100 TO HELL AND BACK 

COQUIMBO 

T was lucky Friday when we caught this phantom ship 
"Orissa" we had been chasing for weeks over moun- 
tains, lakes, plains and deserts. After two days' quiet 
snoozing in the rocking cradle of the deep I woke up 
Sunday morning, God's rest day, ready to go to church service, 
not on ship, for they have none, but on shore at Coquimbo. 

The mass was celebrating in the street and they were cele- 
brating mass in the church and I mingled with both classes of 
worshippers. The little town had the usual plaza laid out accord- 
ing to the same stiff plans of the architect undertaker who figures 
in all the other South American cities. The day seemed more 
given to patriotism than piety and flags, flowers and music were 
the adorable trinity. In our processional through the dusty, 
narrow streets we fell in with an English chap who gave up a 
ride with his sweetheart to show his American cousins around. 
Our first station of the cross was up the hill, where by a cross 
road lay a big stone with a white cross daubed on it. He told 
me a poor fellow had been killed here in a drunken brawl and 
that wherever I saw such a mark it stood for some murder. 
From the wagon loads of bottled booze that were climbing this 
Calvary of death to the segregated sporting district of the city, 
it was easy to imagine what deeds without a name would be done, 
and how busy the white-wash artist would soon be decorating 
more wayside stones with murder marks. The fine wine made 
here plus the women and song draw the men from the mining 
and agricultural districts. They ride in on horseback and amuse 
themselves by racing or trying to shove and ride down a number 
of horsemen lined up before some store waiting for liquid re- 
freshments. We saw some men on horseback carrying milk in 
a kind of saddle bag can, and I came to the delightful conclu- 
sion that there could be no milk without water and no water with- 
out pasturage and that we had at last entered a part of the world 
where an umbrella could be used for something besides a cane, 
a canine defense or sun-shade. 

"Sic transit gloria mundi," I thought, as picturesque Co- 
quimbo was swallowed in the wake and smoke of our ship, but 
after midnight I was waked by the rolling of the boat and at 
foggy four a. m. rolled out of my berth wide awake and trans- 
lated the Latin phrase, "Sick transit, glory! Monday." When 



TO HELL AND BACK 101 

the fog lifted my stomach settled, the anchor went over with a 
splash and I poked my head out of the port hole and beheld 
Valparaiso harbor, with ships from every port, and the city 
clinging to the semicircle cliffs as if it had been swept up by a 
tidal wave or feared being thrown down by an earthquake. 

VALPARAISO 



A CHILEAN company of manly Boy Scouts who were re- 
turning after an outing had entertained us on shipboard 
with their soldierly ways. They went ashore in their offi- 
cial boat and since I had taken an interest in them and a 
picture of them, their leader invited us to accompany him ashore. 
So I was saved another piratical expendition. Mrs. "M" refused 
to get off, saying it would take all the rest of the sea voyage to 
rest up from her recent land trip. 

On shore I ran amidships of my old friend, Captain Matthias 
of the 'Imperial/' who had brought us from Callao to Mollendo. 
His boat was in the harbor waiting repairs. He said he needed 
repairs, he had been so long without a vacation. His wife and 
daughter had never recovered the shock of the terra motta in 
1906, when one of his daughters was killed, their house shaken 
to pieces and everything smashed except the little center table 
with some delicate Japanese china on it. Since they were to 
take our boat to England the next day he invited us to his 
new home, but I told him I was on my way to Santiago. He 
said I didn't have time to see the capital and make the boat. 
I told him I could get there in five hours, spend seven hours 
sightseeing and be back in the morning early enough to take in 
all the sights of Valparaiso, make notes for a lecture and catch 
the boat before noon. He laughed and said, "Nobody but a 
Yankee would do that." I replied, "That shows how much 
smarter they are than other people." 

I had been the mutual friend of a little French Jew and a 
big German Lutheran who were going to Santiago. They had 
fallen out with each other on deck and I hoped the coach would 
bring them nearer together. In vain ! The German smiled at 
Frenchy's spats and Frenchy spat at the German's smiles. My 
sympathies were with Frenchy. He had played and improvised 
on shipboard for me, told me many horrible unwritten chapters 



102 T0 HELL AND BACK 

of Chilean character and history, which as a trader he knew from 
observation, and had written out an itinerary of Santiago's sights 
and what to pay for them. 

We rode in a Pullman-like car, on a government owned road, 
which reverses the rule of robbing the passenger to pay the 
plutocrat corporation. The train rattled along the water front 
with the bay and shipping on our left, warehouses to our right, 
city stores and homes on granite hills above them and passed 
Vina del Mar, a pretty and palatial suburb where the rich roll 
in the sandy soil like porpoises at play or sport like Bacchus in 
the vineyards. The green carpet of the fields was embroidered 
with golden poppies. The stations were a-bloom with black-eyed 
Susans, daisies and South American beauties that nodded and 
waved. The engine whistled by wooded slopes, raced through 
mossy ravines and fruit orchards, swinging our coaches like danc- 
ing partners around the hills. It threw wreaths of smoke at the 
foothills of the kingly Cordilleras and ended its run of 115 miles, 
snorting and panting in the new Santiago station, 1,700 feet 
above the sea. 

SEEING SANTIAGO 



HAILING a driver, who was big and strong as his horse 
and carriage, I showed him the long list of what we 
BJHSJ wanted to see, and gave him a handful of dirty money 
flwsffil to pay for it. He started out like Jehu and ata pace 
that was only slowed up by a funeral procession crossing the 
Mapocho bridge. 

Santiago is no lazy Lima, antiquated Arequipa, carrion 
Cuzco or peaceful La Paz, but a wide-awake, wealthy, snappy 
and sporty city. Though some distance from Missouri it has to 
be shown everything up to date whether good or bad. 

We circled the Square bounded by the big Cathedral, govern- 
ment and archbishop's palace, arcades and hotels; had a brief 
session before the long Congress building; peeped in through a 
crack of the art gallery door and saw some naked men and 
women standing around in marble sang froid; raced through 
narrow Seville-like streets while pretty girls leaned over bal- 
conies as interested as if they had staked their money and hearts 
on us and wanted us to win; passed the bronze and marble 
memorial on the awful site of the Jesuit church, which burned 



TO HELL AND BACK 103 

as an altar with the sacrifice of 2,000 women while priests es- 
caped with their lives and loot; and stopped at the historic rock 
where Valdivia built a fort and fought the Araucanians, the 
bravest of all the South American Indians. 

It is called San Lucia park now and has been made into a 
kind of hanging garden 200 feet high. I hung around awhile. 
There were winding walks, shady steps, statues, terraces with 
cafes and beds of beautiful flowers, but the only things I was 
allowed to pick in this garden were a menu card, a hairpin, some 
confetti and old papers that had been left by the Saturnalian 
celebrators the night before. The view of the city below is as 
fine as you get of Rome from the Pincian hill or of Florence 
from the heights of San Miniato. Could I have remained here 
all night and had Le Sage's "Devil on Two Sticks" knock off the 
roofs of the houses I would have seen the same class of saints 
and sinners. 

CHRIST AND HIS MOTHER 



ON one side of the city rises the hill San Cristobal, the 
base for a gigantic gilded statue of the Virgin. A mer- 
3jyjD£( cenary love for gold has sliced off half the hill at its 
MSMi? base which makes me fear the Virgin will fall and 
occupy a lower position than the statues and images of her Son 
and Saviour in the churches below. 

Mary has crowded Jesus out of the manger cradle and ac- 
cepts His worship and gifts. At Lima over the chancel in La 
Merced you read "Gloria a Maria," in the Jesuit church of the 
Campania at Cuzco are these words cut in the stone wall, "Come 
unto Mary, all ye who are burdened and weary with your sins 
and she will give you rest/' while in the oldest church in Barran- 
quilla there is said to be no figure of Christ in the altar equip- 
ment, but Mary without the infant in the center, figures of Mary 
on either side, and the "Gloria a Maria" over it all. Looking 
towards the Andes I recalled the heroic bronze statue, "The 
Christ of the Andes," which stands in snow-drifts between Chile 
and Argentina as a memorial of love and peace after a hateful 
dispute over their boundary lines. From what I saw at Santiago 
after dark and later at Buenos Aires by day and night I thought 
the statue in the snow was symbolic of the "freeze out" of the 




104 TO HELL AND BACK 

Redeemer from these two cities which like Bethlehem have no 
room for Him in the inn of their hearts. 

I saw a bronze Indian here that stood on a rock looking indif- 
ferently at all this splendid scenery and wished we could change 
places, he to go, I to stay, for a while. 

PARKS AND LARKS 

EAVING this aristocratic park we drove to the race 
track, passing through the popular public Cousino 
park, a gift from the world's once wealthiest woman, 
Senora Isadora Cousino. Here the common people 
congregate. We saw them play football, romp, race, walk and 
waltz. Near the road under some large shady trees I saw a gay 
group of men with handkerchiefs in their hands swinging around 
in pairs and kicking their heels in the air, while the women were 
keeping time and having a good time by raising their skirts high 
enough to show their well filled stockings. I didn't know whether 
they were drunk, crazy or being initiated into some new order. 
It was as interesting as any outdoor dance I had seen in Spain 
or Sweden. I learned it was the zamacuaca, a cancan national 
dance. Those who won't or can't cancan, are wanting in a 
popular proof of patriotism. The Chileans live to have a good 
time. The government says they shall not play the lotteries or 
fight the bull, but they make up for it in horseracing. 

We drove into the race course and were driven out because 
it was time to close, but not until we had seen the big race track, 
the club house, the paddocks, shade trees, refreshment tables, 
band stand, ferns and flowers around the seats and boxes. I 
imagined what it must be on Sunday when the human race 
dressed in its stylish best watched the horse race. I couldn't 
yell and bet on a winning horse, but let out a shout that startled 
our team when I turned around and saw the chain of the snowy 
Andes, rising twenty thousand feet blood red in the setting 
sun. I have seen the sun set on most of the great mountains 
of the world, but with no such glory as this. It suggested the 
revelation of the burning doom of the world which only the 
Apocalyptic seer could describe. Surely such ensanguined sun- 
sets please the Chilean soldiers who have stained the earth with a 
deeper red with their bloody butcheries. I wanted to make a 
glowing pen-picture of this scene, but couldn't because I didn't 



TO HELL AND BACK 105 

have any red ink and so started for the town which would be 
painted red long after the sun went down. 

We drove back by way of the asphalted Alameda, a boulevard 
that runs the length of the city, 600 feet wide, with central 
promenade, driveways and walks on either sides. It is flanked 
by four rows of poplars interspersed with statues and fountains 
and faced by rich residences, the university, barracks and national 
institute. The avenue is an aristocratic artery through which 
flows the blue blood of the town in endless stream of carriage 
and auto. The driver gave us our money's worth and showed 
us as much in four hours as some people see in a month. He 
oddly landed us at the Oddo Hotel, as if we had enough to pay 
for a dinner where women in silks and diamonds and men in 
broadcloth and patent leathers vie with each other in drinking 
champagne and smoking cigarets. 

The stores and arcades had been closed for three days of 
celebration, but were now open and their electric lighted windows 
displayed everything you might need or want in drink, food, 
dress, ornament, books, music, pictures and the latest styles from 
London and Paris. Sidewalks and streets were packed with a 
pleasure-seeking throng, laughing, chatting, swishing canes, wear- 
ing flowers, ogling and flirting. 

FLIRTING 

Ml ASHING is a fine art in Santiago. The police might cut it 
I out with their little swords if they cared to, but they 
don't because they are often busy themselves gazing at 
some tall, pale, oval-face, dark-haired, dark-eyed seno- 
rita walking with her equally pretty sister. They are chaperoned 
by some old male or female protector for fear they will run 
away or be stolen. The scene reminded me of Madrid, where 
the men stand on the corner watching the feminine fashion 
parade, calling attention to this woman's face or that woman's 
figure or foot, asking who she is, how old, whether she is mar- 
ried, and if so, openly complimenting the husband on his good 
fortune. Frequently he tells the young lady she looks pretty 
good to him and puts on the finishing touches of this Latin flirta- 
tion by asking her to fly away and be his love. She is often 
anxious to escape from the prison of a home or society that sus- 
pects her of being unable and unwilling to guard her beauty and 



106 TO HELL AND BACK 

character and watches and follows her like a detective agency. 

Though my wife was over a hundred miles away, I couldn't 
talk Spanish, and so couldn't engage in this lovely national pas- 
time and merely stood on the street corner with "L," a looker on 
at the passing show. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. 
Frenchy had told me to take care and beware of these beautiful 
and bad women of Santiago, with their perfumed Medusa locks, 
manicured harpy claws and painted basilisk eyes. It is not supris- 
ing that this love and license lead to licentiousness and that Chile 
stands next to Paraguay in the number of her illegitimate chil- 
dren. She thinks more of money than morals, too much of her 
nitrate beds and too little of her marriage beds. Sunday piety 
gives way to Monday prolifigacy. The black manta not only 
hides homely faces, but covers horrible thoughts and the Peni- 
tentas with their white mantas and skirts are often worse than 
their sister sinners. 

CHILE CON CARNAGE 



THIS is a big newspaper town and the press isn't afraid 
to print the truth from heaven above or hell beneath. 
I bought some copies and had them translated. Their 
personals were very direct, their editorials fair, and the 
news columns chronicled atrocities of brutal, beastly soldiers who 
tied a father to a tree and outraged his wife and daughter before 
his eyes. 

Chile is low on the map and in her morals. The people look 
down on the savage Tierra del Fuegians who can't look up to the 
Chileans when it comes to keeping the Ten Commandments. 
The lowest savages in South America are the Chilean soldiers. 
They are Chile con carnage, cruel, cold, cursing, carnal. They 
were not satisfied with shooting the Peruvians, but followed it 
up by cutting their throats with knives carried for that very pur- 
pose. These butchers got fresh with some of our sailors and in 
a drunken row killed some, injured others and then sent an 
insulting reply to Mr. Blaine. Uncle Sam doubled up one fist 
and opened the other. Chile apologized and paid an indemnity 
of $75,000 for the families whose heads had been butchered and 
bullied. It is quite appropriate that the national bird of Chile is 
a vulture-beaked condor. 



TO HELL AND BACK 1Q7 



NO PROHIBITION 



HE Chilean clergy have simplified the preaching and 
practice of the Ten Commandments by the omission of 
the little word "not." This results in the Do-away 
version : 

Thou shalt have other gods of drink, gold, gambling and 
debauchery before me. 

Thou shalt make graven images of seraphs, saints, Madonnas, 
Magdalens, Christs and crucifixes. 

Thou shalt take God's name in vain to damn the Peruvians 
and gringo Yankees. 

Remember the Sabbath day to go to church, eat a big dinner, 
attend the horse-races, promenade and flirt, and patronize the 
theatre, cafe and resort. 

Dishonor thy father and thy mother by leaving them out 
from filial plans for flagrant pleasures. 

Thou shalt kill thy Peruvian enemies and unborn babes. 

Thou shalt commit adultery in thought, desire and deed wher- 
ever, whenever and with whomsoever thou findest opportunity. 

Thou shalt steal Peru's guano and nitrate beds, and as much 
silver from Bolivia and cattle from Argentina as possible, not 
forgetting thy neighbor's wife, daughter and pocketbook. 

Thou shalt bear false witness against thy neighbor, Peru, in 
private conversation and public court, in words of slander and 
malice. 

Thou shalt covet everything that is thy neighbor's, the wife 
of his heart, the diamond of his hand, the auto of his garage, the 
financial success of his business and everything else which is not 
thine. 

A RELIGIOUS REVOLT 



SANTIAGO is a great town for Corpus Christi and other 
church processions. I was sorry I missed the big parade 
Wjmm in June when 50,000 marched up and down the streets 
a ^^i* day and night. 
The Elevated Host and hostess of the occasion were dummies 
of a monk and nun side by side, followed by men dressed like 
priests, swinging censors, and students garbed like penitents 
carrying lighted tapers. 



108 TO HELL AND BACK 

The rear was rounded up by bearers of banners with inscrip- 
tions and mottoes attacking the Papal Nuncio and the church 
itself. The blind, aged and superstitious, not knowing it was a 
fake, crossed themselves and bowed and prayed. The spectators 
looked on, laughed and applauded. 

The oldest inhabitant had not seen anything like it in a city 
where the church has a greater revenue than the government 
and clerical property is estimated at over hundreds of millions 
of dollars. 

The Nuncio, instead of contending earnestly for the faith 
once delivered to the saints, had been hustling around for gold, 
mortgaging or selling church property in view of the coming sep- 
aration of state and church. He sent it over to the golden banks 
of the Tiber. The radicals and educated classes further declared 
he had monkeyed in politics, had shown preference for Peru 
instead of Chile and was making clerical appointments which by 
law and usage was the sole right of the government. And the 
clergy v/as the luxurious, idle and dissipated kind of Spain and 
Portugal. It is easy to see why education has been hated here 
by the church. When men study they think, see and act for 
themselves and are no longer willing to tolerate political intrigue 
and robbery which poses under the guise of inspired religious 
piety. This procession was a good sign of better times. A few 
more Constitutional walks like this and Chile will have the relig- 
ious health of her East coast neighbors and Santiago will breathe 
the pure air of liberty instead of the stifling air of canon law 
which isn't good for anybody anwhere. 

A NIGHTMARE RIDE 

THE midnight ride of Paul Revere has been called in 
question, but there is no question of there being any- 
thing to revere in our midnight ride from Santiago to 
Valparaiso. If the Overland to B. A. was like this I'm 
glad I didn't go that way. It was the last train we could take 
and the guard acted as if we were train robbers and he was 
afraid we would take it. We stepped into a springless, cold, 
lampless, waterless, second-class day-coach sandwiched between 
box cars. Starting late we tried to make up time, but almost 
landed in eternity. Passengers purchasing tickets on this line 
should each receive a card bearing the cheerful motto, "Prepare 



TO HELL AND BACK 109 

to meet thy God.** The engine started like a guilty thing upon 
a fearful summons, ran and shrieked, waking the echoes of the 
hills that sounded like the voices of the lost, and stopped with a 
jerk, panting and listening * as if it were pursued. It side- 
tracked, switched, tanked up at stations, reeled and pitched 
ahead till I wondered how it could stay on the rails. O the dust 
and dirt, jar and jolt, hour after hour, till I fell asleep on a 
cushionless seat, dreaming of earthquakes and the crack of doom. 
Then came a bump and a lurch of the train that rolled me off 
the seat and made me think the end of the world had come. 
I opened my eyes and found it was the beginning of another day 
and the sun was shining on the harbor, ships, houses and hills 
of Valparaiso. It looked like a vale of paradise after the pur- 
gatory I had just passed through. No one who takes this train 
can doubt he is in the earthquake belt. It is a good preparation 
because you are well-shaken before taking the terra motta. The 
city is a paradise for gamblers who bet on the Santiago horse 
races, and human nature seems to have corrupted Nature who 
often shakes this pair o' dice. Almost every night it is rocked to 
sleep by earthquakes. 

THE VALE OF PARADISE 



VALPARAISO'S quakes, like Frisco's, are said to be 
"due to a readjustment of the geological fault under- 
s^gg lying the region." Were both towns to receive their 
^*££gi "due" for their immoral "fault" they would be swept 
to the "underlying region," for they are very much like Hell ex- 
cept that they have plenty of water. 

We fell in with some English sailors in the swim who told us 
where we could strike out and plunge into drink dives along the 
shore and Sodom and Gomorrah joints on the edge of town. 
Feeling devoutly thankful for the Providence of the night's ride 
we prayed for daily bread and started to get it. Squares, hotels 
and stores were deserted, so we took a by-street to the market. 
Everything was noisy with people buying and selling, especially 
so in a dark corner where sailors and Chileans were eating break- 
fast. The market was full of fresh fish, fruit and vegetables, 
but all we could get was strong coffee, bread and fish. Sitting 
on a hard bench before a plain board table, watching the cook 
with smoke in our eyes and grease in our nose, our hunger was 



HO TO HELL AND BACK 

satisfied before we began, but we pushed something down all 
the while envious of a fishy looking, smelling man opposite who 
ate fish and more fish and drank like a fish and whose name, I 
think, was Mr. Fish. 

Rested and refreshed we started sightseeing and since the 
conductors on the street cars are women I went into a grocery 
store where they sold muslin and canned goods and bought a 
clean collar. This made me look first class and I could enter the 
car and sit below near the conductor instead of climbing to the 
second class on top. I let several fly by until I found the bird 
of paradise I wanted. She wore a smart black straw, blue suit 
and meant business, promptly taking my money as she rang me 
on, and later rang me off. Why was this fair woman collecting 
fare ? Had the men been killed off in the wars, did they ask less 
wages than men, were they more honest and knocked down less 
fares, did it increase traffic by having young men spend their 
money for car rides instead of cocktails and cigarets, or was it 
an illustration of the woman's rights question, "I dare do all that 
may become a man ?" 

Like good Chileans we looked up to her statue of Admiral 
Prat and like good Americans looked down at her scrap-iron 
naval fleet in the roadstead and said "Vale Paradise" to Val- 
paraiso, but with no such feelings of regret as our primal parents 
had when they left Eden. 

ROBINSON CRUSOE 

HTOWEVER, the paradise of my youthful imagination, 
I the home of Robinson Crusoe and his good Friday, lies 
just West of here. The island is called Juan Fernan- 
dez after the man who barked his boat and shins on it 
in 1583. Chile says she owns it, but Defoe gave it to the world. 
Robinson Crusoe is brother to every child who has an eye to 
read or an ear to hear. This was an isle of the blest in spite of 
its unlucky size of 13 miles in length and the name Friday. I 
never could cry over Alexander Selkirk Crusoe because I thought 
he was pretty lucky to be all alone with no family to beg him for 
ice cream and concert tickets. He could go out and be piratical 
when he wanted to, climb up 3,000 feet on the old Yunge peak, 
slide down into the fertile valleys, eat figs and melons and then 
tango on the beach in fig-leaf trousers with ocean's melancholy 



TO HELL AND BACK HI 

waste before him and a meloncholic waist inside him. Our boat 
didn't touch here and I was happy not to lose the illusion which 
Defoe, the friend of children, had created. The trail of the 
serpent is in every paradise. Since that Friday meeting the 
brave Swiss cheese-eaters, the jolly German beer-drinkers and 
the carousing Chileans have left their footprints on these time- 
honored sands. I learned from the captain that they catch and 
can lobsters, and I was anxious to go over and "can" the other 
lobsters who thus lovingly preserve the island's romantic tradi- 
tions, but they were 400 miles away and we had just coal enough 
to steam to Lota. 

LOTA'S HAUNTED HOUSE 



LOTA is known for its coal and Castle and it is like carry- 
ing coal to Newcastle to say anything about the place. 
We went ashore with two sea-captains who had friends 
there. Naturally the first place we stopped was the 
Saloon Hotel, more saloon than hotel. One of the sea-dogs 
found the liquor very "mellering to the organ" and barked some 
strange oaths until his companion nudged him, saying, "Have 
respect for the minister if not for God." 

On our way to the Castle we passed big-wheeled ox-carts, 
peeked in the small stores, rested in a pretty park, saw a poor 
little cripple, snapped his picture and passed the hat, climbed the 
long hill and made a pastoral call on the widow and family of a 
wrecked sea-captain. She longed for the touch of a vanished 
hand and the sound of a voice that was still. 

The coal mines made Matias Cousino, he made the copper 
smelter and the copper smelter made possible a kind of home 
settlement for the working men. Their wants are looked after 
with stores for food, church for religion and doctors and pills 
for sickness. 

We had no time or wish to go down in the coal mine or 
through the copper smelter, but did want to see Cousino park 
and Chateau. There was no angel guarding the gate with flam- 
ing sword, but there was a stoop-shouldered gardener with flam- 
ing face and bearded lip who raised his hoe and would have kept 
us out had it not been for a young fellow who knew the profane 
captain and gave the word that passed us in. There were flow- 
ers, shrubs and trees, and llamas instead of deer. Beneath lay 



112 T0 HELL AND BACK 

the little town, beyond the wide Pacific, and on the crest of the 
hill overlooking all was the Chateau built by the rich widow, 
Isadora Cousino, a multimillionairess, from her mines, roads and 
ships. 

Distance lends enchantment. In some bushes I saw Venus 
at the bath, but on near approach the fountain was dry and the 
figure plaster. From what I had read of this "finest house of 
South America" I expected to see another Taj Mahal. Alas, it 
looks like a run-down, second class French hotel with chipped 
plaster, cheap windows, broken steps and boarded doors. 

Inside a large space is filled with disorder. There was art 
and artifice, open floors and marble steps, gaudy walls and gay 
ceilings, luxurious bath rooms and sufficient other furnishings to 
make the family contented and happy. Rumor says they were 
not, that death, disease and dissipation had made it a mad and 
not a glad house. I picked up a rusty key in a haunted chamber 
to lock this page and shut out some strange, sad stories I heard. 
Tourists visit the Chateau by day and ghosts by night. The only 
abiding occupant is the spider hanging his cobweb curtains and 
the centipede walking through the deserted halls. 

MAGELLAN'S STRAITS 



THIS was our last West Coast city and I was glad to 
I leave a W. C. where water and soap are practically 
IIIIII unknown. A wreck near the wharf and a reef near 
gg^gip the boat were cheerful reminders of what we might 
expect on our sail to the Straits of Magellan. Passing a Chilean 
submarine boat we were hoisted by a wave on the "Orissa" and 
soon under way, on a wide sea. 

The rhyme of the Ancient Mariner here reads like this, 
"Where'er I roam I love the foam except upon my beer." A 
two days' sail brought us to the land of mist and snow. We saw 
whales spouting to smaller fry, flocks of Cape Horn pigeons 
dressed in beautiful black and white feathers that would make a 
Parisian modiste die with envy, and an albatross large enough 
to make a sea-gull look like a sparrow. With my kodak I shot 
the albatross, a thing I always wanted to do since I heard the 
poem. The deep did not rot, but grew fresh and the "Orissa," 
instead of being idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean 
began to shoot the chutes down the big waves. The sailors say 



TO HELL AND BACK 113 

it is bad weather when the birds fly low and since they were lay- 
ing low for us the captain advised us to roll into bed and forget 
we were on the sea. But sleep here is not a "gentle thing" and 
we were on "deck" and wide awake Sunday morning at 4:30 
when we entered the Straits. 

For the special accommodation of sightseers who come from 
Pole to Pole to see the Straits there is a boat once a month that 
goes through its sublime mountain and glacier scenery at night. 
On account of head-winds that made the officers swear and the 
passengers sick we were delayed, thus making the trip by day- 
light, to the disgust of the captain, who apologized because he 
couldn't get us through in the dark on scheduled time. How- 
ever, we looked at it in another light, sun light. 

The mountains were bleak and blanketed with snow, the ice 
was here, there and all around. Big blue dragon-like glaciers 
wound from ice-castled crags down through ravines to the 
water's edge to wrap us in their icy coils. I had sailed Alaska's 
Inland sea, looked on mountains of rock and ice in Switzerland, 
Norway and India, but this was different with its summits, soli- 
tude and sea-birds. I wanted to go around Cape Horn, but it 
blows such blasts and gores so many ships to death that I had to 
take the Straits. The captain on the bridge earned his money 
and had no time to be social with the passengers. He was think- 
ing of crooked channels, cross currents, dangerous rocks, sudden 
squalls and storms. What must poor old Magellan have been 
up against in 1519 when he told his Portuguese king he couldn't 
give him a new world, but would try to give him a southern way 
around it ! His ship was a rowboat by the side of ours. After 
mutiny and wreck a bad Indian landed him on the other shore, 
where I hope he has charted and circumnavigated the heavens 
so that the reader and writer can find their way in safety. 

I stood in the bow, wrapped in a steamer rug, with arms 
folded not so much to imitate Napoleon as to keep from blowing 
into the deep, dark, cold waters. Giant kelp floated by. The 
Fuegians use it for food and the pilot observes it as a warning 
signal of the dangerous rocks beneath. On either side of the 
now widening or narrowing channel the bold shores were over- 
grown with grass and scrubby trees and sloped up to where there 
were bare rock, waterfall, or snow, ice and cloud. 

This is a picnic place for seals, otters, fish, fowl and Fuegians, 



114 T0 HELL AND BACK 

not for a white man. I had read of the Terra del Fer, short in 
stature and clothes, who came out to meet the ships in his dug- 
outs and trade one of his wives or daughters to a lonesome sailor 
for a can of tobacco or bottle of gin. None were in sight. Per- 
haps they were huddled around a fire making a meal off some 
missionary who had only offered them the virtues of prayers, 
crosses and Bibles instead of the vices of the higher civilization. 
Maybe they were paddling their canoes with family and fire 
aboard in search of fish and crabs. The brutal Yahgan is naked, 
though he wears the pants in the sense of ruling the roost. His 
idea of woman suffrage is to bear children, cook the breakfast, 
row the boat and in case of storm treat her like Jonah without 
providing a friendly fish to come to her rescue. 

What a glorious Sunday ! Of course there was service, and 
I spent little time in formal prayer and Bible reading, but I was 
a reverent and rejoiceful worshipper at Nature's altar. The 
clouds were incense; the rush of winds and waters, music; the 
mountains, the tables of stone commandments ; the sermon, 
"Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee ;" the prayer, "Wash 
me and I shall be whiter than snow." 

THE END OF THE WORLD 



BY sunset the glory had departed, the waters had widened, 
the land had flattened and we had anchored off Punta 
Arenas, Sandy Point, the world's southernmost city. I 
had been to Hammerfest, the most northern, and this 
was about as cold. 

The town has always looked and smelled sheepish. Chile 
founded it as a convict station, a corral for her "black sheep." 
Today its 10,000 inhabitants are engaged in raising, collecting 
and exporting sheep, meat, hides and tallow. The electric lights 
of the city lured our launch through the shipping to the pier and 
we made a hurried hike by warehouses and dingy broad ways to 
the Plaza. The band concert was over, but the South wind- 
instruments blew music. The church was closed and the only 
person around was a statue. The "Sarah Brown" mansion was 
dark. Like moths we were attracted by the light of a curio store. 
As we entered a little lady left the supper table and came to 
meet us. She spoke English and when we did with an American 
accent she tried to sell us a sample of every souvenir she had in 



TO HELL AND BACK 115 

stock. The place was packed with vicuna, guanaco, otter and 
silver fox skins and stuffed pigeons, penguins, albatross and 
armadillos. Two traders came in with a big rawhide bundle of 
skins. The natives catch the game with a boleta. It is a long 
leather thong with a stone at each end, a kind of sling or lariat, 
which they throw at the feet of the animal. I picked one up, 
but it was over an English pound and I threw it at her feet, and 
bought a long bone spearhead which some Tierra del Fuegian 
used to catch a fish or to crack a bonehead enemy's skull. I use 
this savage weapon to cut the leaves of magazines and news- 
paper articles written by ossified and thick-skulled editors. I 
paid for this and the postcards with my last Chilean pesos. 

Chilean paper money is the filthiest lucre I ever handled and 
I was glad to get rid of it. It doesn't represent much gold or 
silver specie, but is rich in every species of microbe known to 
science. A peso equals about twenty cents and has a thousand 
of another kind. It smells dirty, looks dirty, feels dirty. We 
U. S. and Co. have money to burn, but the government would 
never permit us to start a bonfire of Chilean paper in our back 
yard. This cheap mazuma soon soils and smells, looks and feels 
like discarded paper and hospital rags. I'd hate to be a rich man 
down here unless I could count my money with rubber gloves. 
One good thing is that if you don't like the money, and owe a 
man ten cents, you tear the bill in half, and make him stick a 
stamp on it, which adds to the graft of the government. 

We went aboard at midnight and at six next morning weighed 
anchor. In the porthole frame I saw the picture of the far South 
town where human driftwood is washed up on Sandy Point. 
Strange but true, the Straits is the place where crooks convene 
from all over the world. The swift current soon shot us through 
the Straits by lowlands on either side. Suddenly nearing 
the Atlantic, a tall figure loomed in the distance on the Pata- 
gonian shore. Surely it was one of those Irish named Pat or 
Caliban giants Magellan and his men met and scrapped with here. 
The captain assured me it was only a lighthouse, so now the only 
giant I know anything about is the one David hit between the 
eyes and knocked down and out. Late in the afternoon we 
sighted the Falklands and next morning anchored in the outer 
harbor of Port Stanley, 300 miles East of the Straits. 



116 TO HELL AND BACK 

FALKLAND ISLANDS 



CIENCE says the Falklands are the children of Pata- 
gonia. There was no race suicide, for there are more 
than a hundred of them and the Atlantic is their wet 
nurse. Ugliness as well as beauty must draw with a 



single hair because England, France and Spain fought to adopt 
them and John Bull won. 

History avers the islands were first colonized by the penguins 
whose descendants still make up the better part of the popula- 
tion. Then the English came with their mutton-chop whiskers. 
Last were the other mutton-heads that furnish food and clothes 
for the nation whose Union Jack floats over and protects them. 

Aeolus has his headquarters here and keeps a kind Provi- 
dence busy tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. I went up on 
deck and hung to the rail for fear of being blown on the rocky 
shore before the lighter came. The winds whipped the waves 
until they jumped, frothed and howled. When Captain Thomas 
came aside with his mail boat to take passengers to Port Stanley 
we three and the purser were the only ones who cared or dared 
to go. 

SISTER MARGARET 



S I was going down the gang a Spanish passenger 
grabbed me, thrust a package in my hand and said, 
"Give to Sister Margaret at the Convent." I started 
down again, but another man seized me and asked, 
"What's in this ?" I told him he could search me, I didn't know. 
"Let's take a look," he replied. I said he couldn't, for I was to 
deliver it to Sister Margaret. Whereupon he took the package 
from my hand, remarking he was the custom officer, and began 
to unwrap it. He found so many papers that he got tired and 
commenced to smell it. I told him again I was taking it to the 
convent, but he replied, "Yes, but doncherknow the government 
is very strict about tobacco and whisky." He looked like a 
good judge of whisky and tobacco and not regarding it as his 
customary duty to confiscate the bundle, gave me the original 
package. 



TO HELL AND BACK \yj 



A SEA-DOG 



HAPTAIN T. and boat were bobbing up and down with 
impatience. He extended his hand across the sea, 
pulled us on and we were off. Wind-blown, wave- 
washed and salt-sprayed we dived down as if in a sub- 
marine or on the back of a dolphin. "L" and I were brave. We 
stood by the captain and were willing to help him steer, if needs 
be, but he steered clear of us. My wife was in the little cabin 
below, half drowned by big waves that swept into the open 
hatchway. I suppose we looked uneasy. The captain said there 
was no danger, it always blew this way and sometimes worse. 
In a little while we were in the second harbor and docked. 

We were Americans, he was a Welshman and took us to his 
home to see his American wife and daughter. They were the 
soul of hospitality, brought us to the big stove where we could 
get warm and dry, filled us with coffee and cake as if we had 
been shipwrecked and cast up on the beach. The captain had 
been treating the purser with a warm drink from a dark bottle. 
He offered me some and after he drank what I refused related 
what had happened to our sister ship a few months before. She 
struck and went down on the "Billy" rock. He had saved 400 
passengers and the mail, but lost the parcel post. The grateful 
captain gave him a case of wine which he accepted without pay- 
ing any duty. But "England expects every man to pay his duty" 
and he was soaked $250 and had felt sore ever since. I told him 
I knew Carnegie by reputation, would try and get him a medal 
for bravery and have the booze fine refunded. He sadly shook 
his head and said valor, like virtue, was its own reward. How- 
ever, on the return to the ship I heard the other side of the story. 
"Thomas was a splendid sailor and brave, but O you Kidd, a 
pirate who lived off the wrecks of the Royal Mail and other 
vessels." I don't believe this tommyrot and only repeat it in 
order to deny it. Everybody here has a record. I heard Harry 
Lauder's "She Is My Daisy," another proof that one touch of 
the phonograph makes the whole world achin'. 



118 TO HELL AND BACK 



PORT STANLEY 



THE skipper's daughter piloted us through Port Stanley ; 
| to the Gaol, which opened its arms to receive me; to 
the convent, where Sister Margaret did the same 
thing when I delivered the goods; to the Social Club, 
whose exterior was inviting as a mortuary receiving vault; to 
the public school yard, where like a good Shriner, I hung to the 
rope and swung round the maypole; to the little postoffice, 
whose keeper was said to know more foreign and domestic news 
than anyone in town; to the well-built and conducted English 
church, the only Protestant one I had seen since leaving home, 
and to the Museum filled with native shells, rocks, peat, "tussock 
grass," butterflies, sea-birds' eggs, big, speckled and old, the kind 
you would like to present to a bad actor over the footlights with 
your compliments. There were skeleton bones of shark and 
whale, harpoons and whaling outfits, stuffed gulls, albatross and 
penguins. 

The penguin is a bird of an actor. He is a black and white 
comedian and a whole show in himself. No theatre ever is nec- 
essary here, for he and his company give a continuous perform- 
ance on the seashore. When Penguin, the pantomimer, sits up 
you laughingly take notice of wings he swims with and feet he 
uses as a rudder. His beak is black, he wears a scaly dark coat 
and a white vest. When he jigs around on his fat seal-like tail 
he makes my pen grin as I write about it. Feeing the kind old 
guardian we bought some colored stones and shells for remem- 
brance, and gifts for friends on other shores. 

We passed up the Governor's House where the King of the 
Penguin Islands lives; were blown down the one main street 
lined with funny little stone-built, iron-roofed houses huddled 
together to keep warm or from being blown into the sea ; whirled 
through narrow streets with small houses whose front windows 
were filled with bright red flowers suggesting far away England ; 
and whisked around the Globe Hotel, where it was whisky 
everywhere nor any drop of water to drink. Captain T. met us 
and took us to a little building nearby, his headquarters. 



TO HELL AND BACK H9 



NEPTUNE'S CURIOSITY SHOP 



IT T was filled with flotsam and jetsam of shipwrecked 
1 vessels. Here were gray old anchors, with twisted arms 
*S and shanks and weighed with grief ; missing links of 
ID cables rusting in the sea; battered buoys, which had 
been the football of the waves; crazy compasses unhinged 
by some catastrophe, their palsied hands no longer point- 
ing to the North; rudders, weak and rickety through ocean's 
storm and stress; disabled steering wheels, that had cir- 
cled the globe; life preservers, which told the names of 
ships but not of the poor unfortunates who clung to them in 
despair; spars, that had been struck a blow by the waves 
and knocked out, and life-boat lanterns that had lighted the way 
to dusky death. Behind the door I ran against a buxom woman 
in white and asked the captain to introduce me to his lady friend. 
She had been a figure-head on a boat and swept overboard in a 
storm. He picked her up on the beach and instead of taking 
her to his family kept her in his office. Not knowing when we 
three might meet again we stood up and had our picture taken. 
He offered me the girl but I had one, so like a Masonic Diogenes 
I selected a lantern as a souvenir in the hopes that I might find 
an honest man in South America. On the way to the wharf I 
snapped some two-wheeled peat carts and a bearded shepherd 
shaggy as his collie dogs. 

WRECKS AND WHALES 



PORT STANLEY is a hospital where sailing vessels that 
have been blown around the Horn come to have the 
ship-doctor reset their broken ribs, restring their rope 
nerves and scrape the barnacles off their bottoms. I 
saw two old whaling hulks, wished them well and prayed for 
their bon voyage. There is good fishing here and I was sorry 
there was no time to go out and make a big catch, for these are 
great whale waters. Before the Norwegians came with harpoons 
it is fabled the primitive Patagonian giants angled here for 
whales, using a big tree for a rod, a cable for a line, a buoy for 
a bobber, and an anchor for a hook baited with a sea-serpent's tail. 
Science scouts this as anachronistic, but I can believe it as easily 
as some of the theories it has advanced for the "Stone Rivers" 
that roll down these hills. As we sailed the smooth inner to the 



120 T0 HELL AND BACK 

rough outer harbor we passed within a stone's throw of these 
rocky rills of quartzite. Captain T. gave strange theories about 
these rivers. He stopped short when I innocently asked if they 
bottled and shipped any "mineral" waters from these old "stone" 
rivers. We were glad to meet and sad to leave Captain T. and I 
can't believe he is in the "mild-mannered" class of those who 
scuttle ships and cut throats. 

The "Orissa" was glad to get away from this cemetery coast. 
We saw her sister "Oravia" half buried in a watery grave with 
the black "Billy" rock as her tombstone. Her masts were out- 
stretched like skeleton hands to her sister who dropped a briny 
tear or two and hurried from the sad scene enveloped in a cloud 
of smoke like a mourner's veil. Casting a lingering glance be- 
hind through my binoculars I saw the fast receding shores 
crowded with penguins that had come down to see the ship off. 
They flapped us a fond farewell with their black wings as we 
slipped away from these islands of wind, wool, whales and 
wrecks and steered Northwest for the East coast of South 
America. 

MONTEVIDEO 



FOR days we rode the galloping ship over green, watery 
hills to far away Uruguay. It was cold and nasty on 
deck and stuffy inside. Before leaving home I made a 
rash promise to my publisher, "Billy" Donohue, M. A., 
that I would give him the complete manuscript of my "Golightly 
'Round the Globe." Months had gone, I was now on the home 
stretch and every turn of the screw was pushing me towards 
Chicago, where I would have to stand up and deliver. I took 
up the narrative, opened the porthole for fresh air and Neptune 
dashed in and baptized my literary offspring so thoroughly that 
if it was dry and no good it wasn't his fault. One day my wife 
came in when we were pitching and rolling and asked me if I 
wasn't sea-sick. I told her "no," and that I had proved her pet 
theory that mal de mer was a condition of the mind, and not the 
stomach, for I was writing with one hand and hanging on to 
the bunk with the other to keep from being thrown on the floor. 
It may be that anyone, with or without brains, who takes the 
West Coast trip, crosses the Andes and is inoculated with the 
soroche, is immune to sea-sickness. 



TO HELL AND BACK 121 

So my manuscript progressed with the ship until we reached 
Montevideo one midnight when I punctuated it with a period of 
rest. It looked as if there was a patriotic celebration. The town 
twinkled with electric lights, the sky shot star rockets and we 
fired sky rockets for the practical purpose of signalling until we 
entered the harbor, where coal barges surrounded us like so many 
pirate ships. Instead of coaling below decks on the side, or in 
a front hatchway, the fuel was hoisted and dumped the length 
of the promenade decks and then shoved down a coal-hole chute. 
The dust painted the boat black and even the officers were like 
black-face men in this sooty sport. When it came to a good- 
bye we could scarcely tell who was who, they looked so like the 
native roustabouts, yet we knew who and what they were — a 
splendid set of British sailors whose praises I want to sing in 
any public or private meeting of globe-trotters. 

From its name I saw Montevideo was called after a moun- 
tain and I rose with the sun to see it. I could see the town on 
the low ground between the big ocean and the small bay, but not 
the mountain and supposed it was hid in mist. There was a 
mound five hundred feet high, topped by a lighthouse and old 
fort, and when I learned this was the mountain I saw how neces- 
sary the lighthouse was to show where it was, and the fort to 
call attention to it. 

Montevideo was first settled about 1726, then upset in 1806, 
when the British bungler Whitlock and his men were made 
prisoners by Liniers and only freed when they left town. This 
is an interesting bit of history which only occupies a small foot- 
note space in English text-books. James Bryce devotes hundreds 
of pages to the ancient and modern history of South America, 
but makes no "observations and impressions" of this coup by 
which Montevideo was taken from the English and given back 
to Spain. What gladdest words might have been written if 
Britannia had ruled here and made impossible the dark and 
degraded condition that followed. 

Ashore Sunday morning. It was not our Lord's Day but the 
Devil's Day. His children crowded the streets, exchanged their 
money in the tobacco stores and cafes, while I got rid of mine at 
the money changer's, where America's almighty dollar is three 
cents less than Uruguay's. 



122 TO HELL AND BACK 

SWEET SAINTS 



WE walked and trolleyed from wharf and warehouse 
through the town, led on by the cathedral towers and 
dome which looked down on Plaza Constitution, 
one of the city's squares of attraction. Just in 
time to miss the service we stood in line with a profane crowd 
of well-dressed young men who watched the beautiful well- 
dressed women come out and trip down the church steps as if it 
were a grand opera at the Solis Theatre Saturday night. As in 
the rest of South America most of the worshippers inside the 
church are women. The men go to church to stand outside and 
pay adoration to the high-heeled feet of virgins who dress from 
top to bottom in the latest Parisian fashions. 

The religious atmosphere was contagious. I was easily con- 
verted to this form of sight, not faith, and stood transported with 
the rest at the foot of this stone ladder as these very beautiful 
human angels descended. They were a dream, and if I lived and 
preached in Montevideo I would proselyte them into my congre- 
gation or pronounce the benediction in time to be at the cathedral 
door as they filed out. Seeing is believing. These women sus- 
tained their reputation for being the handsomest in the world. 
They are the leading attraction to men who follow religion as 
far as the church door. Spiritually considered this is a low 
motive and I could not help reflect how much higher our reasons 
were at home that urged us to go to church : 

To get an early bath and clean clothes. 
To walk out doors and see Nature's illuminated Gospel. 
To get away from the Sunday newspaper, the Devil's Bible. 
To show the world you have a wife as well as a stenographer. 
To visit with your children once a week. 
To meet a neighbor and transact some business. 
To find a sweetheart you may marry. 
To learn the latest styles in hats and wraps. 
To be introduced into society. 
To see the edifice you subscribed for. 
To hear some music besides rag time. 

To listen to the long-forgotten Ten Commandments and 
Mountain sermon. 

To loosen up and drop a quarter in the plate. 



TO HELL AND BACK 123 

To bow in prayer and thank God you are out of the hospital 
and hell. 

To hear a sermon that proves you love God if you help man. 

To take a good nap you couldn't find anywhere else. 

To wake up to the conclusion that this is a good world but 
will be a good deal better when you help make it so. 

To discover the church stands for civil and religious liberty ; 
that she lessens vice more than the police and reforms more than 
the prison; and that in public and private life, socially, intellec- 
tually, morally and spiritually the church should be encouraged 
by the presence and supported by the prayers and purses of all. 

A HORSE RACE 



AFTER a cafe lunch of sweet music, cake and chocolate 
we rode out to Pocitos, a resort for ocean and city 
swells. As the season was over the only pebbles we 
found were on the beach. The big hotel was empty 
as must have been the pocketbooks of those who spend a summer 
there. We drank in the sea air, feasted our eyes on the ginger- 
bread houses facing the beach, then raced for a car that took us 
out to the race track. 

Grand stand and bleachers were packed, and naturally, be- 
cause all the women were admitted free and the men, who had 
not attended church and paid their dues in the morning, had 
money enough to buy an admission ticket and a library of bets 
with the bookies. I enjoyed the horse-race, for I had lived long 
enough in Kentucky to appreciate one, but of more interest than 
the fast horse was the human race of merry men, gay girls and 
betting boys who were spending time, money and energy in a 
national sport that improved the breed of horses and degenerated 
the race of men. 

FLAG AND FRIEND 

NIOT to double on our track we returned another way 
I and got off at Plaza Libertad. Everybody was having 
a free and easy time except two old rams hitched up to a 
cart full of children which they dragged through the 
flower embroidered walks and around the Liberty column. Like 
the Athenians who always wanted to see and hear some new 
thing we rambled through the halls and library of the Athe- 



124 TO HELL AND BACK 

naeum. Strolling on the Eighteenth of July I saw something that 
suggested our Fourth of July, our glorious Stars and Stripes 
floating from the American Legation. With a cheer we charged 
across the street, burst into the building and I thrust my card 
and an American stick pin flag into the hands of the frightened 
elevator boy. We jumped in the elevator, shot up, landed and 
were left in a waiting room. He soon returned, bowed and ush- 
ered us into the reception room where the Envoy Extraordinary 
and Minister Plenipotentiary to Uruguay and Paraguay came, 
slapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hello, Golightly, what are 
you doing here?" It was Nicolay Grevstad, my old newspaper 
friend from Minneapolis who wrote such hot editorials that he 
set the Tribune Building on fire, but was cool-headed enough to 
come down the fire-escape while others plunged into death. He 
was always a tribune of the people and the light and warmth of 
his influence have been sadly missed since he removed his candle 
stick from Minneapolis. 

When he learned we were to leave that night and had not 
visited the Prado, he called a taxi and introduced us to the S. A. 
speed limit of 60 miles an hour down the leading streets and ave- 
nues. We sped by public buildings and private residences, past 
exposition grounds and under a triumphal arch of eucalyptus 
trees to the Prado, the show park of the town with its lake, drives, 
trees and gardens. Supper was ordered on the big cafe porch 
and while we ate, drank and heard the music Nicolay told us in 
a scholarly, friendly way a volume about Uruguay. Back to the 
Legation in the dark, about 70 miles an hour, we said au revoir 
with the feeling of a fine and friendly visit, and started leis- 
urely for the boat, taking in as many sights on the way as 
possible. 

BLACK ART 

t IP 1NTERING a news-stand on Plaza Independencia I picked 
I JL^ J up some sample illustrated magazines and papers for 
lg§p|§H my reverend and reporter friends at home. They were 
IjjBqjSWl f u u f coarse caricatures of full-dressed men and half- 
dressed women in questionable places and suggestive positions. 
It wasn't necessary to go back in the dark and ask for something 
shady. They were out on the street in full blaze of electric light 
where boys and girls of tender years could cultivate tough, adul- 



TO HELL AND BACK 125 

terous imagination through low artistic ideals. Children not only 
looked at the pictures, but lingered over their descriptions, and 
as I read their faces I was sorry I didn't know Spanish. I deter- 
mined to learn it before I got home in order to appreciate the 
literary legacy the kind and thoughtful mother Spain has left her 
children. 

This smut was a preparation for what I saw here a week later, 
after I had left Buenos Aires. Returning from a wrestling match, 
I fell in with a crowd that promenaded up and down a street of 
houses behind whose glass front doors and windows nude and 
half-clad women posed for the picture painted by Solomon in the 
Gallery of Proverbs : "She sitteth at the door of her house, on 
a seat in the high places of the city, to call passengers who go 
right on their ways ; she saith to him, stolen waters are sweet and 
bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the 
dead are there ; and that her guests are in the depths of hell." 

MODEL URUGUAY 



NEVERTHELESS Uruguay says she is the most model, 
modern and moral country of South America. Only 33 
per cent of her children are born in bastardy as com- 
pared with 60 and 75 per cent in some of the other, 
countries ; her laws are even more up-to-date than ours because 
a woman may sue for divorce if her husband has a bald head, a 
red nose, a wart on his chin, a soiled vest, pants that bag at the 
knees or unshined shoes. To show her superiority to backward 
Peru and progressive Argentina, she has a bull-ring at Colonia 
where the B. A.'s, tired of horse races, can come across the river 
and have a "bully" time. Moreover she leads in education, for 
she boasts that one in every five can read and write. In religious 
matters to show her toleration she has gone her brothers and 
sisters one better, not only separating church and state, but try- 
ing to eliminate the Bible from her libraries, Christ from the 
calendar and heaven from her hope. Lastly, all these choice 
fruits of civilization grow in the Socialistic soil of her govern- 
ment, which she is justly proud of. 



126 TO HELL AND BACK 



KISSERS 



HERE and all over South America this is the polite and 
proper thing to do when you meet a friend or acquaint- 
ance in the store or street ; rush up to him, throw your 
head over his shoulder, pound him on the back, kiss 
him, rub your whiskery face against his as a horse does against 
a hitching post and repeat this performance as long as he will stand 
for it, while the victim retaliates in the same manner. After this 
center-rush, tackle, scrimmage and "touch down" you rest, get 
your breath, smile and say "Good morning, how are you ?" 

Everybody does it. Men and women, boys and girls in low 
or high walks of life. With our ideas of kiss and hand-clasp it 
seems a waste of time and energy. I wouldn't object if I could 
choose my friends, refusing the man with cigaret breath and 
restaurant bill of fare on his moustache, and the woman who 
approaches with powdered face, painted lips and putrid teeth. It 
must be awful to have a lot of friends and acquaintances. 
Instinctively one recalls Martial's epigram to Flaccus in Rome: 

"It is impossible, Flaccus, to avoid the kissers. They press 
upon you, they delay you, they pursue you, they run against you, 
on all sides, from every direction, and in every place. No malig- 
nant ulcer will protect you from them, no inflamed pimples, or 
diseased chin, or ugly tetter, or lips smeared with oily cerate, or 
drop at the cold nose. They kiss you when you are hot and 
when you are cold; they kiss you when you are reserving your 
kiss for your wife. They will kiss you in a fever or in tears; 
they will kiss you while you are yawning and swimming; they 
will kiss you though you be sitting on the lofty tribunal or when 
you are sitting on . . ." 

In good old U. S. A. this social osculation and strangulation 
would be regarded as a medical and moral misdemeanor and come 
under the head of assault and battery. 

Montevideo, M. V. for short, stands not only for many vices 
and virtues, but macaroni and vermicelli. It is daily manna to 
thousands of Italians who have swarmed and settled here since 
Garibaldi came over in a red shirt with a red hand to murder 
Argentina's president. 

We left on the "Londres," pronounced "Laundry." She 
washed us up and down and across the La Plata, Silver Plate 
river eighty miles to Buenos Aires. There is no bigger, bum- 



TO HELL AND BACK 127 

built boat than this side-wheeler that struck every buoy in the 
bay to the outer harbor. Mrs. "M," believing it would sink, rose 
up and dressed that she might not be ashamed when washed up 
on the shore. 

BUENOS AIRES 



AT seven in the morning we were out in the harbor, where 
we got a sight and smell of the city of good airs, 
Buenos Aires. Of more interest than the baby ship 
leviathans and greyhounds were the sea-horses a mile 
from shore. I was making a scientific note of this unnatural 
fact in natural history when the boat came near enough to show 
me they were ordinary horses out either for a morning walk or 
bath or to pull in the lighters of the heavy ships that can't dock 
at low tide. We took the channel through a labyrinth of ships 
and docks lined with cattle pens, cold storage plants and grain 
elevators, till our rocky boat found a berth in which to sleep 
during the day. 

A "Majestic" man offered to take us to his hotel. While a 
white-slaver, who had just come in on a French boat, was being 
held up on the wharf, and checked for his excess baggage of 
feminine finery, we hurried to the Customs. But before we 
could get through, the dry season ended with a deluge. There 
were no street cars and for half an hour we ducked around in 
the water trying to get a carriage. The only way to secure one 
was to bribe a boy who ran ahead and brought one back. Not 
knowing the game I stood waiting and wet. Finally after every- 
body had gone I hailed a carriage and as we were about to climb 
in a boy came up, opened the door, holding it and his hand open. 
I motioned the driver to go ahead and gave the boy a small tip, 
but he demanded more and the driver, who was in the holdup 
conspiracy with him, wouldn't start. I yelled "Caramba," 
pushed the boy, slammed the door and scared the driver and 
horses so that we dashed off before a policeman who had heard 
our conversation could come over and arrest me for disregard- 
ing the customs of the country. 

The hotel was on the Avenida de Mayo and our room had a 
balcony where we could look out on this big, beautiful, busy 
street of the town. At the custom house I paid to have my bag- 
gage brought to the hotel, but when it came I was asked to pay 



128 TO HELL AND BACK 

again. I called the interpreter and pointed to the mark on the 
trunk, saying it meant "Paid." He told me it meant "Collect." 
I said that might do for an Episcopalian, but not a Baptist min- 
ister. I refused to pay and sent the man away. I might have 
avoided this trouble if I had only remembered I was in Argentina ; 
that it means silver ; that its inhabitants are 16 to one foreigner ; 
that they go out in the morning with the perverted scripture, 
'Thou shalt hate thy neighbor, love his money and get much of it, 
giving little in return." The bags were soaked through except 
mine, which had the kodak and films. I said the Lord took care 
of it. Mrs. "M" asked me why He didn't take care of hers, 
which stood beside it. "The Lord takes care of His own," I 
replied. 

B. A. was founded in 1535 and twice dumfounded and de- 
stroyed by the Indians. In 1810 she placed her thumb to her 
nose and told the Spanish rulers to go to Hispania. Let alone, 
the city has multiplied and replenished itself in various ways 
until there are more than a million Spaniards, Italians, English 
and Germans breathing the good air. 

An afternoon walk shows a city very much like Paris in its 
architecture, fashionable stores, cafes and sidewalks filled with 
little tables where males and females flirt and gossip. There are 
newspaper kiosks and flower girls selling violets on the corners. 
The side streets are crowded with cars and carts and the main 
avenues with taxis which rest in the center or rush up and down 
either side. At night it is a big white way with electric lights 
blazing a trail to the light-hearted cafes and theatres. 

CASINO AND CEMETERY 

I {** 1 AUGHT by the glare we left the wide avenue for the 
| \^ j narrow streets with their three foot sidewalks which 
|RPjjjpf§f make it necessary to put your two feet on some pro- 
ifaSr jecting door step to keep the street-car fenders from 
brushing your shoes or tearing your pants. The Colon, the big- 
gest and best theatre in S. A., was shut and we followed the 
crowd to the Casino. I bought three two-gold-dollar parquet 
seats and waited the high class performance. It was a man- 
show and Mrs. "M" was the only lady in the place, although the 
encircling boxes that climbed to the ceiling were filled with women 
who turned their backs to the stage, entertained their gentlemen 



TO HELL AND BACK 129 

friends behind the curtains, or if alone cast captivating glances 
on the bachelor pit with the hope of catching _ some companion. 
It was good twenty-five cent vaudeville, the jokes were better 
or worse considering the kind of people who most applauded 
them, but best of all was the intermission when the whole house 
rose up to get its money's worth of admission, by smoking, eating, 
drinking, mashing and making dates in the foyer galleries. Of 
course good Americans make a bad mistake in coming here— with 
their wives, and Mrs. "M" would have been furious if it hadn't 
been funny. Thereafter, to be perfectly safe, when "L" and I 
went out for amusement we left her at the hotel to get a good 
rest for the next day's sight-seeing. There are many things to 
see, but you must take an auto. 

First we drove out to the cemetery to arrange for graves in, 
case we were killed by the chauffeur's reckless driving. The peo- 
ple live so fast they soon finish their earthly course and several 
large cemeteries are necessary to accommodate the remains. I 
recollect the Recoleta. With fond memories the surviving rela- 
tives come every day, but especially on All Saint's day, to visit 
the graves of the dead sinners and light a candle for those who 
went out in darkness, praying they may be pardoned with a short 
imprisonment in purgatory. I never saw so many splendid 
granite and marble statues, and expensive vaults and tombs so 
poorly placed and piled against each other. There are no church- 
yard burials and no green turf to wrap their clay so we raced out 
to the Jockey turf where human thoroughbreds bury their for- 
tunes. 

BETTING 



T 



HE race horse is king of animals here. Men act like 
centaurs and there is so much horse talk on the part of 
women one recalls the estimate of the Neapolitan 
,_,,_ prince, "Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing 
but talk of his horse— I am much afeard my lady his mother, 
played false with a smith." The race course is to B. A. what 
the Coliseum was to Rome. About 20,000 people, rich and poor, 
steal and starve all week in order to play the races Sunday and 
fast women ride to hell with golden bits. The races around the 
track are said to be on the square and as might be expected, 
where people think more of money than mind, the betting is un- 



130 TO HELL AND BACK 

literary for there are no "bookies," the plan being the Paris 
Mutual one. "Who steals my purse steals trash" depends on 
whether he has won or lost on the race. Often the winning 
purse is up in the thousands and I learned the generous gov- 
ernment only takes ten per cent of the bets, allowing the other 
ninety to the winners. 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND 

AS children we enjoyed the Zoo, and wondered what the 
animals thought of us as northern fauna. Like Adam 
we walked through the Botanical garden but felt it 
would be more delightful when Eve came. Here and 
there were groups of stiffs who gave me the marble stare. I 
didn't know why the quarries had been robbed for their sake, 
when lo a turn in the road brought me face to face with the 
"First American" I had seen in B. A. It was my old Revolu- 
tionary friend George Washington whose spirit had inspired Mar- 
tin and Mitre, Argentina's heroes. I took off my hat, said 
"Hello George," went up to him, slapped him on the back and 
stuck an American flag in the lapel of his bronze coat. Our little 
visit was interrupted by a guard who, knowing I was a tourist, 
feared I was trying to take a chip off the block or kidnap him 
bodily as a souvenir. I pointed to the flag, said "America," 
made him believe G. L. and G. W. were brothers so that he 
allowed us to finish our little visit without further molest or 
arrest. This was an unexpected pleasure. I was as dee-lighted 
as when I later met my other American friend T. R. at R. J. 
(Rio Janeiro). I told George I must go but would leave him 
to take care of the Americans down here, that there might be 
peace and not war in the hearts of his countrymen. 

IN CONGRESS 

YlOUNG Argentina is as proud of the new Capitol she 
I is building at B. A., from blocks of native marble and 
red porphyry fine as Egypt's, as a youngster is with his 
ABC building blocks. I wanted to compare its in- 
terior as well as its dome and wings with ours on the Potomac 
and cautiously climbed over the board scaffolding at the entrance. 
I was thinking to what foolish lengths a tourist's curiosity would 
lead him when a guard came up. Satisfied we were transient 



TO HELL AND BACK 131 

gringos and not natives who wanted to see where their money- 
had been sunk, he made a grandiose genuflection, patted his 
badge, and pointing above and around, beckoned us to follow. 
We went from crypt to dome, through private reception and pub- 
lic assembly halls and interrupted committees and legislative 
bodies in session that started, paused, smiled and proceeded. He 
was a con amore man and waxed eloquent on everything from 
blue ceilings to red carpet floors, and from glass chandeliers to 
brass cuspidors. We looked, listened, Ohed and Ahed, touched 
the different furnishings to see if they were real, and after walk- 
ing and running a Marathon around the building ended where 
we began. This time I bowed, thanked him and offered a tip. 
Whether it was too big or small he refused to accept it until 
I stuck a flag through it saying "cigarettos." Presto, he smiled, 
and took it with both hands. A threefold cord is not easily bro- 
ken and I think each strand of flag, money and tobacco was a 
blessed tie to bind him to me. 

Sightseeing is the strenuous life but that was our business. 
We were compelled to get a "move on" on sea and land, like that 
famous globe-trotter, the Wandering Jew. An amateur art ex- 
hibit back of the Exposition hall invited us; we devoted a few 
minutes in the San Marco Cathedral seeking rest, not religion, 
and spent half an hour at the Plaza Hotel which was all the time 
we could afford because the rates are from $10 to $50 gold a day. 

Not only did we have to dodge autos, to isles of safety, but 
showers that almost drowned us out of collar, shirt and shoes. 
During a brief rainbow interval we paddled through the torrent 
streets to pay our respects to the American minister. His warm 
welcome made us feel dry. Most of our misrepresentatives are 
poorly salaried and housed and might be excused if they paid 
little attention to their fellow citizens. As a rule they are big 
hearted and brainy though their bank-account is small. Telling 
us it was rainy weather but he would try and bail us out of jail, 
if necessary, he bade us good-bye and said that among all the 
statuary in the city none was more striking than "Doubt" across 
the street. I saw it and there is no doubt of his judgment. 



132 T0 HELL AND BACK 



A DELUGE 



THE next thing we observed was a rapidly approaching 
storm. It was not the "pamperos" or dust kind but the 
deluge variety that made us rush for a street car as to 
an ark of safety. Wading across gutters knee-deep in 
water we waited on a corner ; a car stopped ; we got on ; the car 
started ; the conductor came back ; I offered him the fare ; he rang 
the bell and pointed to a little word ; I thought it meant he would 
do his duty and register the money for the company ; I nodded and 
smiled ; he shook his head and scowled ; the car stopped and he 
gently assisted us off the platform into the raging storm; the 
water was deep enough for me to administer the ordinance of 
baptism to my son according to the original New Testament form 
of immersion. Alas, I later learned the car seats were full and 
he couldn't carry us on the platform, yet when we stepped off 
he let another fellow on who was big enough to take the space 
we two had occupied. However I was becoming accustomed 
to the polite "good airs" of this town that prints literature and 
furnishes lectures mad with Yankeephobia to snarl and bite all 
over S. A. against North America whose Monroe Doctrine, 
money, mentality and morality have been Argentina's help in the 
past and is her only hope in the future. 

THE "COLON" 



THE people of B. A. are lovers of pleasure more than 
lovers of God. There are many theatres of which the 
Colon is the greatest, occuping a whole square. The 
city owns it and furnishes Grand Opera for the Divas 
on the stage and the Dives in the box who tells his poor Lazarus 
brother he can go to the dogs and pick up a few crumbs of 
comfort at the movies. The theatre was closed but the back 
door was open. We went in and saw a performance I hadn't 
enjoyed even in the Grand Opera at Paris. An attendant ushered 
us through the fine foyer and corridor down the main aisle to a 
front seat. I heard the carpenter's anvil chorus, looked at No-. 
body in the boxes, who is always there, and went down into the 
bare dressing rooms. Then happened something that never hap- 
pened before in any theatre. I could scarcely believe my eyes, 
my voice stuck in my throat and my hand grew palsied. The 
polite usher utterly refused a bill of good dimension I offered 



TO HELL AND BACK 133 

him. Thinking he wanted silver instead of paper money I prof- 
fered that. It was no use, the more I insisted, the more he de- 
sisted. Here was an act absolutely unique in dramatic art teach- 
ing a great lesson that would never become popular but be cen- 
sored as vicious and demoralizing in any other theatre of the 
world. 

PUBLIC SCHOOL 



ARGENTINA doesn't brag of her army and navy very 
much but duelling is popular and its survivors could 
sjwW form quite a land defense. When it comes to dread- 
^8&9l naughts she thinks more of the Ship of State and of 
teaching the young idea how to shoot than investing her needed 
cash in super or submarines. Entering an open court of what 
resembled a government building I found a school. The school- 
master had evidently been abroad in the land for he welcomed 
us in English and seemed as proud of his bright scholars as Cor- 
nelia was of her Gracchi jewels. The floor was a blackboard 
on which the children were sitting making maps of darkest Af- 
rica and America. He said they needed more room ; I suggested 
more light, for the room was very dark. He mentioned Sarmien- 
to, the great educator, and I told him I had recently seen his 
6,000 foot double-pyramid mountain monument off the Straits, but 
the professor replied there was a bigger and more enduring one 
in the city, his system of public school education. General Sar- 
miento was minister to the United States, returned to B. A., and 
as president of the Republic set up U. S. educational ideals, em- 
ployed our teachers and made Argentina lead in education. 

He said, "Found schools and you will do away with revolu- 
tions." And when he said schools he did not refer to the colonial 
kind, ecclesiastical and aristocratic, but those of popular, his- 
toric and scientific freedom. 

The city has more private than public schools though there 
is a national university which is trying to elevate the mind and 
offset the inadequate if not immoral influence of the so-called 
"religious" education. No doubt Argentina has a fine system of 
public education, and when it becomes more general she will 
have more generalissimos capable of leading her in advance lines 
of mental, moral and material prosperity. The public school is 



134 TO HELL AND BACK 

what has made and maintained North America, it is the only 
thing that can maintain and make South America. 

It is easier to beget children than to get them educated, so 
our Pilgrim and Puritan fathers taxed themselves to support pub- 
lic schools and teachers who should educate the youth in the facts 
of nature, history, government and religion. 

Monarchy educates a few, Democracy the many. Beyond any 
country has our soil produced a manhood of civic and patriotic 
character. 

The public school as no other agency can touch, teach, equalize 
and harmonize all classes. 

It offers the priceless liberty of body, mind and soul for us 
and our children. 

It fuses our immigrants into a composite citizenship, fitting 
them for freedom and making them free. 

American working men are superior to the Old World because 
of our public school education which is definite, practical and can 
fit for private life or presidential station. 

The government has the right to preserve and perpetuate 
itself and knowing that ignorance is danger, defends itself by the 
education of its youth in the public school, adapting them and 
making them equal to all occasions. 

The Public is no more like a Private school than light is dark- 
ness. The one produces independence ; the other submission ; one 
a leader, the other a follower; one freedom and toleration, the 
other slavery and superstition. 

The public school makes good citizens, the private school 
makes good bigots. 

The difference between North and South America is the dif- 
ference between public and private schools. 

The public school assimilates and Americanizes the rich and 
poor, of every race and religion ; the private school not only robs 
its children but injures the government. 

Many denominational schools crouch like spiders in a web to 
spring out and seize everybody and thing from the babe in the 
cradle with a rattle in its hand to the old man in the coffin with 
the gold ring on his finger. 

This counter American system of private schools often misin- 
forms its youth who are to vote, and are nurseries of treason. 

We sue doctors for malpractice who wrongly set a broken 



TO HELL AND BACK 135 

bone. Jail sentences are none too good for teachers who mis- 
inform and deform children's minds. 

The church best teaches religion when separated from the 
state, and greatest temporal and spiritual blessings have always 
been found in civic and clerical separation. 

The American idea is separation of church and state and any 
union of the two is un-American. 

The greatest force which makes and holds our national unity 
is not language, press or politics but the public school. 

The public schools of Minneapolis outweight in moral value 
our libraries, art galleries, orchestras, stores and mills. 

We could sooner do without our private churches than our 
public schools. If there was nothing but a church there would 
be no school. Give us the schools and we will have the churches. 

Teacher and book are greater than army and navy. Wisdom 
is worth. Our schools measure the progress between the Old and 
New World. It is for us to cherish and support them not only 
as objects of the defense of our government, but as institutions 
of love and approval by Him who declares that man without 
knowledge is not good. 

The public school is neither atheistic nor sectarian but repre- 
sents what Webster called the great and necessary ideas of God, 
immortality and personal accountability. 

The people who kicked the Bible out of the public schools 
now call them "godless." Schools that produce character and 
citizenship are not godless and never will be so long as the chil- 
dren who attend come from pious and patriotic homes in the 
morning and return to them at night. 

There is more of moral as well as physical and mental cul- 
ture in the public school than in any denominational school that 
ever has been or can be founded. 

The man who will not support the public school with his 
money, prayers and patriotism is un-American, no matter what he 
says. He should go to ignorant, superstitious, lazy and licentious 
South America or Southern Europe where the public school is 
not. 

Paralyzed be the tongue and palsied be the hand that asks 
and takes state support for private schools. 

He is a blind fool or cowardly traitor who fears to face and 
fight whoever and whatever would weaken and destroy the public 



136 T0 HELL AND BACK 

school system, the basis and bulwark which has made our country 
what it is and has received the approval of Almighty God. 

"By their fruits ye shall know them." In proportion to their 
numbers it is the private and not the public schools whose grad- 
uates fill our jails, burn cities and murder presidents. 

The temple of American liberty is the Public School where 
a congregation of all colors and creeds reads the bible of His- 
tory, studies the Catechism of the Constitution, practices the 
Declaration of Independence and sings "America." 

"Let us have peace" and say with its great apostle General 
Grant, "Encourage free schools and resolve that not one dollar 
appropriated to them shall be applied to the support of any sec- 
tarian school." 

_^ EMPTY ALTARS 

WHEN it comes to religion B. A. is big on show and lit— 
I tie on substance. Rivaling the Colon theatre is the 
gl^sdj Madeleine Cathedral as a show place. It is modeled 
^■s^^l after the one in Paris. Its columns are wreathed with 
electric lights which were dark every night of my stay. It could 
hold 9,000 of the local madeleine class but neither the vicious 
nor their virtuous sisters came here to pray for the door was 
shut. In Paris Napoleon declared the Madeleine should be a 
temple of glory where the praises of the heroes of Austerlitz 
should be sung, but his plan was Waterlooed and it became a 
place of worship. Here the plan has been reversed for the chief 
shrine is the tomb of San Martin. After devoting himself to 
his country's freedom he was driven out in disgrace, because he 
wouldn't become a member of the political gang that believed the 
treasury was a public crib where the animals in the government 
stalls could feed and fatten at leisure. Asking for bread while 
living they gave him this stone when dead. 

So far away from civilization I wanted to know the news of 
the world and here among many newspapers, were two printed 
in English. One Heralded general information, and the other 
gave a Standard report in which the most interesting item was 
that Philadelphia had won the world's baseball championship from 
New York in the last game, "three goals to one," in the words 
of the English sporting editor. The every day Bible is the 
newspaper. The reading of "Prensa" and "Nacion" is all they 
think necessary to enter good society here and heaven hereafter. 



TO HELL AND BACK 137 



LA PLATA 



LA PLATA is a large, lovely, lonely city 35 miles from 
B. A. and reminds me that a side-dish is often more 
attractive than the regular course. Tired of B. A. beef 
we tried this river town which furnishes fish for the 
inland cities. Fish must be good brain food for La Plata has 
a university, observatory and museum well manned. It was 
one of these men, a professor of chemistry, I met on the way 
there. His language was broken but he was whole-hearted. He 
pointed out the factories, tanneries and storage plants of B. A.'s 
suburbs, then the estancias or farms full of the biggest, sleekest 
cattle I ever saw, waiting to be butchered and cold-storaged and 
sent away. As usual when you visit the far away lands of teas, 
coffees, fruits, rare flesh and flowl the best is exported and the 
rest is left for home-consumption. I got some good steaks down 
here, good for nothing but the dentist, for the first thing I did 
on my return was to have him repair the ravages which the dry, 
tough Argentina leather goods had made on my teeth. 

We entered a railway station beautiful enough to be an art 
gallery. All the buildings are architecturally fine, whether the 
government palace or police headquarters. At one time La Plata 
planned to be the biggest city in Argentina. Nothing was too 
good for the provincial capital and she blew herself for buildings, 
parks and avenues. The bubble burst, the crowds pell-melled to 
B. A. and left it a deserted city, preferring high life to literature, 
commerce to culture and carousing to quiet. As we rode through 
and around these empty streets the town suggested some giant 
architect's plaster model of a city — something to look at but not 
live in. My H-2-0 friend had a class and left us in care of 
the anthropological professor who showed us some of the finest 
paleontological specimens in the world. 

JAWBREAKERS 

THE Museo de La Plata is Mother Earth's big family 
vault where the remains of some of her first and dearest 
children lie. I am afraid she would never know her 
darlings if she saw them now, with the foundling names 



discovering scientists have given them. Glyptodon Clavites, Ba- 
laenoptera Miramaris, Mylodon Robustus, Macrauchenia Pata- 
chonica, and Priodontes Giganteus. For two hours the professor 



138 TO HELL AND BACK 

gave this roll call of the dead and did his best to explain what we 
were seeing. His interpreting talk in broken Spanish and Eng- 
lish was harder to understand than the names of long length and 
thundering sound. As we grew weary he grew enthusiastic and 
pointing to an immense fossil deposit, which had been the di- 
gested dinner of a dinosaur, exclaimed, 'The latest." As a 
final thriller we paused before a long line of armadillos, headed 
by the gigantic "dill" Priodontes that Time had for unnumbered 
ages preserved. All these critters and many more petrified us 
with astonishment until we might have been added to the collec- 
tion. These antediluvian animal exhibits, in the two big circular 
halls at the right and left of the main entrance, were more than 
a circus of live animals to the Prof, and he took us around like 
little children. I wondered whether the sight of these frightful 
monsters had driven away the timid inhabitants of the city and 
whether at night kind fathers and mothers talked and prayed 
with their naughty children, telling them if they did not stop 
crying, go to sleep and be good tomorrow, the jabbawock Scelido- 
therium Leptocephalum would walk out of the Museum and give 
them a jab. 

These were not the only fossils. In another hall I was in- 
troduced to one, S. A. Lafone Quevedo, the English-speaking di- 
rector of the Museum. He showed me a gallery of curious 
shaped and colored cracked pottery, and rows of "dead-heads" 
just as curiously shaped and cracked. 

A LIFE SAVER 



THE last night in B. A. I left my wife at the hotel, to 
pack up, telling her I believed in the "father and son" 

movement and would take "L" to some mission services. 

We visited the M. E. church that stands like a Rock of 
Ages 'mid the mad whirl of vice and pleasure. In addition to 
Sunday services it held midweek attractions of music, lectures 
and movies to lure and lead to a better life the crowds surging 
to death through the Broadway of cafe, saloon, dive and low 
theatre. Dr. McLaughlin, Christian, cultured, consecrated, and 
respected by all creeds and classes of society for his good Sa- 
maritan life, met us at the church door, took us into his study, 
told us of his work, pointed to the crowd and moving pictures 
in the lecture room and served us with lemonade. I drank to 




TO HELL AND BACK 139 

the health, long life and prosperity of this mission and man who 
with the Y. M. C. A. is doing more for God and man than all 
the pompous prelates in the city. 

SEEN AND OBSCENE 

T was now nine o'clock, the time for church to let out 
and the Devil's mission to begin. We followed some 
of his congregation to the Royal theatre, paid 
$1.50 gold apiece to stand up in the back behind 
a rail and look at some silly French films for half an 
hour. They were followed by the real entertainment which 
was opened by an American chorus whose flat voices 
would have been high priced at twenty-five cents admission. 
I endured it in shameful silence but the audience was 
"cynical," and by barks and obscene sounds, instead of hisses, 
showed its dissatisfaction. So far all this was but a prelude to 
the interlude intermission when everybody adjourned to an upper 
and lower foyer, where the band played, the men and women 
marched and countermarched, flirted, paired off and sat at the 
tables eating and drinking. 

The "ladies" were especially friendly to "L" and me, 
alone and idly looking on. They spotted us as tourists and in 
French, German, Spanish, Italian and English said Good evening, 
asking us if we would not have a drink or go out with them 
for a little walk. One admired L's gold watch charm and wanted 
it for a souvenir; another coveted my scarab thinking it would 
make a nice breast-pin. I compromised with her on an American 
flag, which she proudly bore aloft. Another as unmindful of my 
calling, as I was of "not standing in the way of the ungodly," 
chucked me under the chin and said, "Hello, Kiddo, how's New 
York?" 

This was the life, or death I didn't care to cultivate. I told 
them I had no time or money to waste and that my wife was 
waiting for me to help pack the trunk as we were to sail in the 
morning. We returned to our standing place to get our money's 
worth of torture. It was over at twelve when we left. Hurrying 
to the hotel I met the hotel runner who had first befriended me 
at the dock. He asked where we had been. Everywhere I said 
and told him. He laughingly replied we were in the wickedest 
city in the world and hadn't seen anything. Then he proceeded 



140 TO HELL AND BACK 

to introduce us to the Red Lamp district across the river where 
the sailors are searched and relieved of their arms, where the 
arms of the frail denizens relieve them of their money' by charg- 
ing dollars for dime drinks; where blistering curses and kisses 
echo through the darkened room; and where colored movies of 
human and animal life are shown that would make the porno- 
graphic pictures of Paris and Havana look like a Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress film. 

TANGO TIMES 



HERE we saw the real tango, for Argentina is its birth- 
place, but it is a modest minuet compared with the way 
we rush it. The man from Buenos Aires would not 
know it with our pernicious variations. 

The natives wore more clothes and danced more decently 
than the low-waisted, high-skirted, diaphanous tangoists of our 
so-called high society. 

Sexes move and mingle within each other's arms and legs in 
a satyr's saturnalia that sacrifices mind, manners, modesty and 
morals. 

To tango or not to tango is the burning question of the day 
followed by tango teas and suppers which give moral indigestion 
at night. 

The Unholy Trinity of modern society's religion is Terpsi- 
chore, Cupid and Bacchus. 

The rising generation would rather hear a fiddle than a ser- 
mon, sing a "rag" than a hymn and profligately dance than de- 
voutely pray.- 

Their idea of Heaven is a large lighted hall where angels 
harp ragtime music, Gabriel leads the tango and they dance for- 
ever. 

Dancing is no longer "silent poetry" but loud actions which 
suggest things words dare not describe. 

The tango is licentiousness set to music and is popular be- 
cause depraved. 

The dance has degenerated from devotion and diversion to 
dissipation and debauchery. It is the "Dance of Death," and its 
step in due time slides to hell. 

We reached the hotel in time to eat breakfast, pay the bill and 
make the boat. If I could become a robber-baron hotel keeper 



TO HELL AND BACK 141 

down here in B. A. a few months, I could make enough to build 
a fleet of boats and accommodate my stranded friends, lured here 
under false promises, crying and dying to get back home but 
who haven't the price of a ticket. 

A stands for Argentina the leader of the South American re- 
publics in progress, prosperity and profligacy. Her 7,000,000 
population are mostly foreigners who farm the Pampas prairie 
land making possible the vast exports of corn, cattle and 
frozen meat. Though the British were once driven out they 
have been gladly received again for they have raised the dough 
for B. A.'s commercial banquets, investing millions of pounds for 
city, county and railway improvements. 

At the docks we saw ship-loads of Spanish and Italian immi- 
grants coming here to work, or having worked, carrying 
their wealth of wages back to Europe to remain until it had run 
out when they would swarm back. The masts and ropes blos- 
somed with flags while the natives in their many-colored garbs 
looked like bunting. From bow to stern they were singing and 
having a heavenly time. They come from European surround- 
ings, which have done little for their personal progress or mor- 
ality, and as a result we find them in the city, ignorant, super- 
stitious, vicious, prone to gambling and drunkenness and filled 
with labor unrest. 

BAD ALWAYS 



BUENOS AIRES is about the size of Philadelphia and 
while it is more wide awake, it lacks its brotherly love ; 
it has all the smut, style and salacious spirit of Paris 
without its art and literary life; it rivals Berlin in its 
drink, but lacks the German's musical and philosophic atmos- 
phere ; ir exports more chilled meat and wheat than New York 
and imports more white slaves than all of our coast cities; it 
hasn't so many divorces as Chicago because there are more 
people living together as husband and wife without the marriage 
ceremony ; it publishes more statistics and pamphlets than Boston 
without possessing its education and culture; it has the horse- 
racing of Kentucky without its chivalry; it has the contented 
arrogance of London without its books and banks. 

Notwithstanding these drawbacks B. A. unites with M. V. in 
sustaining the dual reputation of being the Sodom and Gomor- 



142 TO HELL AND BACK 

rah of South America. The Devil's calling cards he gives to 
visitors here, have B. A. after his name, and it does not stand 
for Bachelor of Arts although he has that degree from several 
European and American universities. 

Last impressions are first in mind. I had hoped B. A. would 
stand for "Better Afterwards" but just before the boat pulled 
out I found it meant "Bad Always." A well-dressed man sold my 
wife some pretty post-cards of the city and while she was looking 
at them he took me to one side, whispered "dirty book" in my ear 
and offered me something "nice" to read on the trip. I read the 
title, "The Lustful Experiences of a Physician" and refused 
him saying I was no doctor, didn't intend to study for the pro- 
fession or do anything that would make it necessary to contract 
for his medical services in advance. As the ship sailed out of 
the harbor, I gazed ruefully at this roue paradise of a city, re- 
peating the lines of the poet, 

"Farewell, dear, damned, distracted town ; 
Ye harlots live at ease." 

I have forgotten the rest of the lines, dear reader, but don't 
you think this is enough? 

THE COCK'S MASS 



THAT night at eight we again touched Montevideo. "L" 
and I went ashore to pick up some driftwood literature 
that we wouldn't have to sneak away to read, or smug- 
gle through the customs at New York. Unlike B. A., 
the town was poorly lighted, but we had been here before and 
easily found the straight and narrow way because it was empty. 
Soon again we were in the shadow of the Cathedral. 

I had seen the worshippers the previous Sunday and wished 
now it was midnight of December 24th and that I had a special 
invitation to the celebration of the Cock's Mass, "La misa del 
gallo." All through S. A. I saw this sacred bird perched on 
church vanes and houses and painted on shrines. Christmas Eve 
they have a kind of religious rough house service in honor of the 
cock that crew when the cowardly Peter profanely denied his 
Lord. This celebration was so scandalous in B. A. that the arch- 
bishop cut the rooster's comb, pared his spurs, took the crow out 
of his throat and forbade the mass. 

Who can doubt Professor Monte Verde of the University 



TO HELL AND BACK 143 

of Uruguay when he said, "The Roman church here is in no 
respect the same as that church in the United States; the 
church has given its people no true knowledge of religion; it 
forbids the Bible to the people; its moral influence is not good; 
the great mass of the leading people in Uruguay, in govern- 
ment, in society, in the intellectual life of the community, despise 
it; it hates inquiry and intellectual progress. It would prefer 
clubs of infidels to Protestant churches. I speak strongly but 
soberly, with a full knowledge of facts." 

A WRESTLING FARCE 



NO matter, I was in time to see a wrestling match be- 
tween a French and German champion, and by the 
mass, it was the funniest fake ever staged. Gotch and 
Hackenschmidt are my personal friends. I had in- 
troduced them at various matches and after Gotch had won 
the championship in Chicago I stood on the veranda of the 
hotel with him and his wife, made a speech to the crowd for 
him, and was regarded with a waist hold on her and a kiss. I 
wish they had been here with us to enjoy something that was a 
combination of boxing, fighting and wrestling. A crowded 
theater looked down on two slob-shaped men in tights who were 
struggling for the glorious championship of absinthe and beer. 
Not only was the toe-hold barred, but any legitimate hold on the 
neck, body, arms and legs. All the referee allowed them to do, 
to the great disgust of a crowd which hooted and howled, was 
to pinch each other's ear, tweak the nose, pull the hair, gouge 
the eye, roll over on their stomachs, get up and run around each 
other, shake their fists and wag their tongues. The referee told 
the disgusted audience to go home or somewhere else if they 
didn't like their wrestling. 

Too bad these foreign fakers disgraced the manly art of 
wrestling, an art favorable to man's highest development. 
Physically it does more to take the bile from the liver and blood 
from the brain than all the doctor's dope. Mentally it requires 
more of brain skill than of brute strength. Spiritually it makes 
man his self-master and enforces chastity, temperance and self- 
control. 

Jacob was the world's first wrestler. He got a foothold on 
his twin brother Esau at birth, and later by a stranglehold de- 



144 TO HELL AND BACK 

prived him of his birthright. A second time Jacob wrestled with 
an angel who put his thigh out of joint and called him "Israel" 
because as a prince^ he had prevailed in his petition for a blessing. 

The apostle Paul attended the Olympian race-course and 
Isthmian prize-ring and declared that while he did not wrestle 
with flesh and blood there were the greater adversaries of "prin- 
cipalities and powers." 

All sport has its danger line when it subordinates the in- 
tellectual and spiritual to the physical and is led into brutality 
and gambling. But wrong abuse was never good argument 
against rightful use. 

The world is a mat where we engage in a life-long struggle 
with the Devil, who tries the toe and strangle hold on us. 
Angels and saints are the spectators and God waits to crown us 
victors. 

We made the last car for the boat and could find no Uruguay 
money to pay our fare. When the conductor looked as if we 
would have to get off and walk, a kind citizen paid. This was 
an object lesson for some of us in America who calmly watch 
or applaud a conductor put a stranger off the car because he has 
foreign money. Walking to the boat, we came across a surging 
crowd. Strange for 1 A. M.? No, it was the usual midnight 
parade in front of the houses of the "strange woman" who takes 
the stranger in. 

CUPID AND BACCHUS 



HERE and there were the painted women whose keen eyes 
stab, whose vampire lips suck life-blood, whose tresses 
are winding sheets and bodies graves in which honor 
and purity are buried. Happy for them had they 
dressed in a shroud, clasped hands with a leper and kissed a red- 
hot stove than to have dressed, drunk and debauched as they 
did. 

These midnight marauders seem to think the stars were lit 
to lead them on from shame to shame, while the truth is they 
sadly look down on souls whose beating pulses live for a 
pleasure that murders time, health, wealth, character and repu- 
tation. 

They follow Satan as guide, hypocrisy as lawyer, impudence 
as an art, pleasure as an object and damnation as their end. 



TO HELL AND BACK 145 

If their minds were like matter and could show decay they 
would smell like carrion. They wear fine clothes and live in 
beautiful houses, but their minds are empty and their souls in 
rags. 

Religion has pleasure, but their pleasure was religion and 
Cupid and Bacchus their saints. 

The fabled Greek temple of pleasure had a big doorway for 
entrance, lights, music and beautiful women within and back of 
it all a wicket-gate which opened into a pig-pen. 

Thus the end of vice is not satisfaction, but satiety, and the 
bacchanal worshipper of what appeals only to his physical senses 
is thrust out naked, ashamed and alone. Satan smiles and hell 
is happy. 

A dying king dreamed he would be met on the other shore 
by a beautiful woman and led to a throne. Instead he was wel- 
comed by a horrible hag who leered and laughed at him. When 
he recoiled and asked who she was, she replied, "I am your sins 
and have come to live with you forever." 

Leaving this bare-breasted, forbidden fruit tmtasted, we 
bought some navel oranges on the wharf, crossed the gang, went 
to our cabin and fell on our knees thankful that if we had been 
led into temptation we had been delivered from evil. 

JESUITS IN PARAGUAY 



PARAGUAY deserves a passing paragraph. I didn't go 
there because I had sampled S. A. and found it was no 
place for a minister's son. Unlike Uruguay, Paraguay 
is a back number, though it isn't Nature's fault. She 
blessed it with a splendid climate, rich soil and grazing lands, 
whose cattle, horses and sheep would have delighted Job; with 
forests of hard wood, India rubber and quebracho for tanning; 
with fertile fields that can raise corn, sugar-cane, rice, coffee 
and cocoa ; with Hesperides gardens of oranges to suck, bananas 
to bite, tobacco to chew and smoke, yerba mate to drink; and 
with the great Parana river to carry all this in its arms down to 
the Plata, which takes it to the sea for export. 

Murderous man came along and cursed it. Of course Spain 
sent over her avaricious and adulterous evangels to corrupt the 
natives, fill their cradles with creole half-breeds and her own 
church coffers with gold. Reverend Mr. Jesuit, D. D. — Devil's 



146 T0 HELL AND BACK 

disciple — took charge of the Indians and all they had ; fought the 
Paulists; kicked out the Spanish governor; told the church to 
mind its own business and proceeded to rule for himself. 
Their Jesuitical intermeddling intrigue made the King of Spain 
sore and with their Judas brothers they were all driven out of 
S. A. in 1769. 

The Jesuits came more for plunder than piety, took little 
interest in evangelical work and were often as fiercely cruel to 
the Indians as the soldiers themselves. The sweetest verse in the 
Devil's bible, "the end justifies the means," they adopted as their 
motto. As a result they fastened fetters on the mind; hated 
public education with the same hatred they expressed toward 
the learning of Galileo, Pascal and Bacon; were guilty of po- 
litical intrigue; revived the gentle Inquisition, blessed massacres 
and encouraged other political crimes. 

It is the Christian's duty to love, stand by and work with a 
Jesuit or any one else who is willing to be guided by an open 
Bible, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. When- 
ever piety turns to politics, and clericalism to conspiracy, the 
state, which has a right to exist, has a right to perpetuate its 
existence by enforcing the idea of freedom on which it rests. 

HELL'S QUEEN 



ALL'S bad that begins bad. In Paraguay license was 
called liberty and in its name Revolution became ruler. 
The sceptre was a soldier's sword; generals built their 
thrones on skulls; dictators wrote their messages with 
swords dipped in blood; Lopez I. died and his son Francisco 
stepped into his father's shoes, mounted the dictator's throne 
accompanied by a prostitute he met and maintained in Paris. 

She was the power behind the throne. Decent people who 
avoided her company were imprisoned or put out of the way. 
She got drunk, gambled, engaged in low debauch, made her hus- 
band plunge the nation in war with Brazil and Argentina to 
satisfy a greed and ambition that killed off most of his men. She 
inspired her husband to deeds without a name till his Satanic 
Majesty must have become jealous, either because Lopez was 
pulling off some exhibitions on earth which made his below 
look tame, or because he wanted this mistress, the lascivious 
lady Lynch for himself as Queen of Hell. Dear Messalina, who 



TO HELL AND BACK 147 

elevated her favorites, turned her nose up at the courts, sold 
war secrets, killed high citizens who criticised her, gay and silly 
violated the Seventh Commandment with Caius Silius, and con- 
verted her husband Claudius I. to the error of her ways, would 
bite her ghostly lips with envy if she read Clio's page on Para- 
guay concerning her French rival, Madam Lynch, who spent 
her last years in poverty and obscurity and died forsaken of 
God and man. 

THE LIMIT 



BAD as things were, I am surprised things are as good as 
they are under the nominal form of republican govern- 
ment at the unsanitary capital Asuncion. Paraguay's 
religion is Roman Catholic, but the people are not 
working much at it. The mixed population is lazy; its com- 
pulsory education is found on paper; the press is muzzled; free 
speech is gagged; illegitimacy is the chief occupation. But to 
the bashful man or bachelor, who hasn't been able to mate and 
marry, Paraguay is an inviting paradise of would-be-Mother 
Eves. The statistical ratio of women to men is three to one, 
while the practical relation was foretold by the prophet Isaiah, 
"In that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, 
We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel; only 
let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach." 
Among the dozen Americans here some are like the heathen, 
a law unto themselves, their excusing consciences permitting 
them to receive the attention of three times seven women. 

ON THE AMAZON 



DOES the reader envy the writer who sailed on the 
"Amazon" for five days and nights? Well, "Amazon" 
was the name of our boat and from here to Rio 
Janeiro there were many points of similarity between 
it and the river. Exploring this "Amazon" I had many ad- 
ventures and hair-breadth escapes among the different ani- 
mals and tribes, and made notes of many of their customs, 
pastimes and pleasures. I saw head-hunters at the head-water, 
or bow of the boat, hunting in their hair the animal Burns has 
immortalized in heroic verse; savages who ate with knives; 
a maneating fish such as T. R. no doubt discovered in Para- 



148 TO HELL AND BACK 

guay; gay plumaged birds of many feathers that chattered and 
fluttered all around; turtles that sat solid all day and snapped 
at anyone who came near; alligator pairs sunning themselves 
on hatchways; serpents crawling between a jungle of interlaced 
hands and feet to twist themselves around the confidence of the 
unsuspecting; wild game day and night that couldn't be smoked 
out of the room, but remained to drink and prey on each 
other's pocketbook. But of greatest interest were the tribes 
which I noted and "L" sketched. Amazons not only breastless but 
heartless ; a wild Russian ballet troup that sang, danced, hugged, 
kissed, played hands and made love in broad daylight and nar- 
row moonlight and so naturally leaned on shoulders and sat in 
laps I thought they must be "naturalists" making investigations. 

Sunday came and went with no religious service to thank 
Him who holds the sea in the hollow of his hand, for it might 
have offended some atheist skipper. There was no objection 
to a crowded and continued all day and night service of gam- 
bling and drinking, because every one was supposed to approve 
of these naughtical pastimes. I managed to work in a few 
sacred hymns on the piano between some low rags and upper 
attic melody, but spent most of the time in watching the prac- 
tical illustration of the text, "Wealth gotten by vanity shall be 
diminished." I don't know what fish there were under the keel 
of the boat, but I saw some card-sharks attack some suckers 
and almost skin them alive. They played silver and lost, 
staked up gold pieces and had them swept away and only 
stopped this side of their boat ticket and hand-bag. I looked 
in through the window and after the game saw the two sharpers, 
who pretended to be strangers, come out in the shadow of the 
life-boat and divide their gains. One of them half-blind, but 
with a good eye for business, asked me if I wouldn't take a 
hand in the game. I told him I didn't want to play on Sunday 
and my wife was unwilling for me to play on week days. While 
the passengers killed time, the boat made time, and after three 
days ploughing up 1,000 miles of Atlantic water, steamed by 
hills and headlands into a little river fringed by palms and 
native huts, entered Santos harbor and docked near a coffee 
warehouse. 

It deluged for an hour, and if the water had been hot and 
the sacks of coffee roasted, we might have had some real good 




t:-f" 



TO HELL AND BACK 149 

coffee instead of the make-believe that was offered at the table. 

SANTOS 
HE rain stopped and we walked one of the three miles 
of docks lined with ships on one hand and coffee ware- 
houses on the other. There was an endless chain of 
barefooted, coffee-colored natives from wharf to ship 
carrying on their heads and shoulders the world's morning cup 
of coffee. We trolleyed through busy streets to the Square with 
its little church, theatre and stores, then to the American consul. 
His obliging secretary told us if we hurried we could catch a 
boat that would take up across the river to a train for Guaruja, 
a fashionable seaside resort for Santos' 400. 
A SWELL RESORT 
HOT-FOOTED race brought us to the ferry and we 
were soon on the other side. The little train whisked 
us by banana plantations and ten miles of a miniature 
Amazon jungle on either side of the road bed. It was 



low, thick with twisted trees, tangled with vines and impene- 
trable as a wall. There was only a path of split tree trunks 
here and there which the native must follow or leave at the 
peril of being lost. Our train crawled like a snake through the 
jungle and came out to the sandy shore with its blue sea, bath- 
houses, rock-girt islands, gardens with walks and flowers and a 
hotel where money ebbed and flowed with the tide. Death 
always shadows brightest joy and round the rocky point of the 
shore a ship had just struck and gone down. Spying through 
my glass I could see Charon, who is always looking for busi- 
ness, paddling in his death-boat and picking up the ill-fated 
passengers. There was an aeroplane on the sandy beach for 
the high-flying tourists, but my friend Beachey wasn't here to 
sail it, and there were enough risks for me to run on land and 
sea before I got home without taking another chance. 
^^ THE WORLD'S COFFEE-POT 

O"* UR Lady of Montserrat, sitting on the hill above the 
j town, beckoned us back to Santos. It might as well 
be called Coffeeville, for its smell was in the air and 
at a distance the smoking funnels of the steamers and 



the puffing chimneys of the city looked like so many spouts 
and snouts of gigantic coffee-pots. 



150 



TO HELL AND BACK 



There is coffee here to burn, though most of it is roasted 
abroad or at the breakfast table. I wasn't able to visit the coffee 
plantations in Sao Paulo county, but my Portuguese letter to 
the President of Brazil served as an introduction to the presi- 
dent of the biggest coffee magazine in the world. 

At the door we climbed over Portuguese roustabouts asleep 
on coffee sacks like negroes on bales of cotton at New Orleans. 
Once in, we walked through aisles and miles of sacks of green 
graded coffee, piled from floor to ceiling. There was enough 
to build another Eiffel tower, a Chinese wall or to throw up 
a defense around the city against invasion. In one place rose 
a pyramid of coffee which would have taken Napoleon's army 
a long time to reduce. I started to walk around it, and just 
as the guide helped me up Cheops, so the president pulled me 
up. I sank in coffee filling my shoes and pockets until I was 
almost buried. Dragging me out he took a key from his pocket, 
pointing to a room and proceeded to unlock the door. There 
in almost harem-like seclusion were scores of girls sorting the 
coffee berries according to size and color. I was tired and 
thirsty and this "coffee, coffee everywhere and not a cup to 
drink" was aggravating. I pointed to my mouth and sucked 
my lips. He understood and beckoned me across the street 
to a little cafe. 

He gave the order to the waiter and we took it in a little 
white cup about the size and shape of a hen's egg. It was half 
full of coffee. Instead of filling it with cream and putting in a 
lump of sugar, my host put in about five spoonfuls of light- 
brown sugar. I raised my hand to say "Hold, enough." He 
shook his head and said, "mucho sucre," and put in some more 
till the cup was filled with a thick liquid. It was made according 
to the proverbial recipe, "black as night, bitter as death and hot 
as Sheol." I drank it and seemed so pleased I was offered an- 
other cup. My host used cognac with his and tried to give me 
some, but I let well enough alone. It was stimulating enough 
without it. 

Some use coffee as a stimulant, others as a kind of quinine 
drug. Originally, to quote the poet, "It was in Abyssinia made," 
later it was mixed in a pasty form and eaten as a kind of con- 
fection. The Cairo cafes furnish it so thick you need a tooth- 
pick after each cup. Here, instead of treating your girl to gum, 



TO HELL AND BACK 151 

soda or candy, you give her a cup of coffee. If you want to 
make a business or a card deal, write a poem or pick a pocket, 
preach a sermon or sing a song, you nerve yourself not with 
Bourbon or Helicon, but with copious cups of Brazil coffee. It 
makes you wise to see through all things with half-shut eyes. 
Dreading lest I might contract an habitual liking for good coffee, 
I left my host who further pressed his kindness on me in the 
form of several sample tin cans of big and little beans, and 
made post-haste to the ship that was to carry me to the blessed 
land where they serve the unreasonable drink of drowned bread- 
crusts, chicory, burned beans, wheat and rye. 

RIO DE JANEIRO 

KIPLING wanted to roll down to Rio, but we rolled up, 
and the next morning rolled out of our bunks and 
waited with Maggie for the clouds to roll by. They 
did, and we sailed to Rio by bald and frowsy headed 
islands, broken-backed Corcovada peak and Sugar Loaf Hill too 
sweet for anything. Poets, painters, peregrinators and photog- 
raphers have nearly killed themselves and others trying to de- 
scribe Rio's harbor, saying there was nothing like it anywhere 
but here, and then comparing it to everything everywhere else. 
But pshaw! there was nothing new. I had seen it many times 
in my nightmare travels through Dreamland. Instead of tiring 
the already weary Willy reader with two pages of description, 
I will sum it up in two words I gave my proud and excited Portu- 
guese friend, "Mucho fino." 

Landed in this city of Arabian nights and Jupiter Pluvius 
days we taxied down the Avenida to the hotel of the same name. 
The street cars come to this hotel like the travelers and go 
through it as the hotel clerk goes through your pocketbook. We 
were assigned the "third floor back" to a room big enough for 
a duplex and a ceiling high enough to mow away tons of hay. 
Best of all was the balcony where we could see the endless 
procession of people and autos, house-tops, public buildings and 
church spires and listen to the band of street musicians that 
played the same limited number of selections every night for 
eight days. 



15 2 TO HELL AND BACK 

A BAD CUSTOM 



RIO is such a fashionable city, we felt we must wear 
some of the glad rags we had carried over and around 
e|§53 S. A. I went with the hotel runner to the custom house 
jfiPfflf for my trunks. I offered the checks and the officer 
shook his head. I pointed out the trunks and he shook his head. 
I looked at my watch and he shook his head. By that time I 
wished I was a bull-dog and could shake him from head to 
foot. 

I should have known from previous S. A. experiences that 
to get a thing done well and quickly you must give a base bribe. 
This is the custom of the country. So I dug up a small silver 
mine of several thousand reis. The runner swore I was in a 
hurry to make arrangements for Mr. Roosevelt's reception, and 
without opening the trunks to see whether I was a smuggler 
they were O. K.'d and sent to the Avenida. The custom officer 
took the money, smiled and thanked me. As he turned I was 
tempted to use my foot in illustration of the proverb, "A 
custom more honored in the breech than the observance." 

RUBBER ATROCITIES 

[ A ILL day we rubbered around and at night visited a 
I,/\l Brazil rubber exhibit in the Monroe Palace named in 
fBggg honor of the Monroe Doctrine. Our U. S. secretary, 
USIISJ Elihu Root, was here in 1906 at the meeting of the 
Pan-American Congress. I hope he made it plain we were 
rooted and founded on the Monroe Doctrine idea, an idea not 
elastic, as it would seem from the rubber show, but granitic as 
our White Mountains. There were photos of rubber camps, 
movies of tapping the trees, canning the "milk," smoking the 
hams and loading and shipping them down the^ Amazon to 
Para, which is piled up with rubber as Santos with coffee. I 
had heard and read of rubber atrocities ?.nd they were corrobo- 
rated by an American I met here, who told me his two years' 
experience in rubber camps. There were exhibits of rubber in 
all shapes and sizes, and manufactured articles from a baby's 
teething rattle to an auto tire, yet if there were moving pictures 
of the rubber camp hells on earth and of their Soares devil 
family of owners and drivers, the infant would sicken as he 



TO HELL AND BACK 153 

nursed his bottle and the auto joy-riders would pause in their 
mad career and take a street car. The story of the discovery 
and use of rubber would stretch itself over many pages, but it 
is enough to remember that about half of all the rubber the 
world uses, not including the rubberneck wagon, is from Brazil. 

THE AUTO JUGGERNAUT 



RJ. STANDS for real joy when you auto ride through 
the Avenida with its stores and public buildings, on 
the Beira Mar by the sea, over avenues lined with 
towering palms, along sandy beaches, by villas with 
beautiful gardens and up and around hills through jungle luxuri- 
ance to the near summits of Tijuca and Corcovada. 

My friend Corson of Minneapolis lives here and offered 
to be the auto guide. Each car has two drivers in front, one 
to go like Barney Oldfield while the other holds out his hand 
to signal. They rush down the streets fifty miles an hour with 
an ambulance following close behind to pick up the people hit. 
Years ago in Paris I tried to cross the boulevard and raised 
an umbrella to keep a horse from knocking me down. This 
made me liable to arrest. In excuse I said I might have been 
run over. I was told that would have been much worse, for 
they would fine me for being in the way. But Paris is a funeral 
procession compared with the reckless driving here. They 
realize Nahum's prophetic declaration, "The chariots shall rage 
in the streets, they shall jostle one against another in the broad 
ways; they shall seem like torches; they shall run like the 
lightnings." For fear our auto would become a modern Jugger- 
naut and sacrifice every man and animal that tried to cross the 
street we forced our disgusted drivers to slow down to thirty 
miles an hour. 

SUGAR LOAFERS 



THE ride was an appetizer and after a good dinner 
we took in Sugar Loaf for desert. It rises over 2,000 
feet above the bay. The only way to reach the top 
is to swing from the mainland in a little car on a 
cable like a spider on its web. A baby hurricane was squalling 
at sea, the wind blowing great guns on land and what is usu- 
ally a dangerous trip would have been impossible if there 



154 TO HELL AND BACK 

hadn't been six of us fools as anxious to spend our money as 
the company was to get it. 

We left Mother Earth at the exposition building and swung 
by cable over houses and gardens to a hill top 1,000 feet high. 
Here we took another cable car and swung across a ravine to 
the summit of Sugar Loaf, 2,200 feet above the sea. First we 
sailed out like a bird, quietly between earth and sky, but the 
storm-wind struck us, the cables creaked, the car careened, 
the passengers grew sick and pale and clung to the wire-win- 
dow netting like monkeys in a cage. "L" and I were having a 
second edition of our St. Louis experience in a captive bal- 
loon, when the winds kicked us around like a football. At 
the end of the first cable stretch it was all we could do to stand 
up and walk over to "the second cable car. By the time we 
mounted Sugar Loaf's bald head and crawled to the steel look- 
out, we found we were in as dangerous a position as a fly trying 
to walk on the head of a bald-headed man leaning back in his 
summer chair in the stiff breeze of an electric fan. My hat blew 
off, and if I hadn't buttoned up my pongee coat it would have 
followed suit. 

I am Holland descent and weigh 200 pounds and for fear 
I might become a Flying Dutchman and descend on the terrified 
inhabitants beneath I followed the Creator's command to Satan, 
"upon thy belly shalt thou go." It was every man for himself 
and the devil for us all. I cast a glance behind and saw a 
witch-like figure with disheveled hair, and floating skirts riding 
on a broomstick. Was this a Walpurgis scene? No, it was 
my wife bestride an umbrella holding her hat and hair with 
one hand and with death grip clutching the hand-bag in the 
other, which held all our return tickets. Like a grinning gar- 
goyle "L" stood with his legs twined in the iron railing taking our 
pictures. From this ridiculous view I looked on a sublime 
one in the distance. The lightning was playing leap-frog over 
Corcovada's broken back, the thunder was rolling down the 
green slopes of Tijuca, the driving wind was whipping the 
waves before it until they were covered with a lather of foam. 
Then the rain with its wet sponge wiped out the pretty picture 
of Rio, and her suburbs nestling between hill and shore, the 
bay and islands, liberty cap and thimble peaks. Just as we 
were beginning to endure this with some enjoyment the guard 



TO HELL AND BACK 155 

insisted we should return. Entering the car, we took a headfirst 
dive through space and landed safe and sound with a prayer 
of thanks to Him who takes careful watch of children, women 
and fools. After our strenuous sport we looked in on a foot- 
ball game, but it was such a ping-pong affair that we made 
the hotel our goal. 

BALLET BEAUTIES 



OUR Russian ballet friends were stopping in this hotel 
and as we had seen them in private action on the boat 
we thought it would be nice to witness their public per- 
formance that night at the Municipal Theater, and see 
whether it was as "natural" and interesting. At the front en- 
trance the prices were sky-high, but at the stage door I pre- 
sented the card of the troup manager, whose name ended in 
"sky," and got in. On the boat "L" had sketched him looking so 
handsome and intelligent that he was pleased to give us his card 
and invite us to look in. From the wings we stared at the big 
theater filled with Rio's rich men and beautiful women. After 
the first act they made the dancers feel that the only thing 
brilliant in the audience were the electric lights, because the 
people were so unresponsive and stingy with their applause. 
Mrs. "M" had had all the ballet scenes she cared for on the 
mountain, and we left her asleep at the hotel. The ballet was 
"Scheherazade," and standing with the odalisques in the wings 
or mixing with the dark-eyed houris of the harem on the stage, 
we enjoyed it as much as the sultan himself. The troup proved 
it was admirably fitted for the parts it had rehearsed on the 
boat. The whole atmosphere was of "Araby the blest," with 
its soft lights, sweet music, stealing perfume, suggestive dress 
and sensual motion. Really it was no place for a minister's 
son, and so I told "L" to go. He was either afraid to leave me 
alone or had promised his mother not to come home without 
me, so we stood by each other till the last curtain was rung 
down and the light fantastic toe-dancers had redressed and re- 
tired. 



156 TO HELL AND BACK 



AROUND RIO 



A FULL day requires a full stomach, but there was no 
| : breakfast till noon. So we ate a little fruit, some eggs, 
bread and butter and drank some black coffee. The 
cups were small, the coffee strong and required so 
much sugar that I acquired the habit of having the waiter give 
me the coffee-pot, which I proceeded to empty into the sugar- 
bowl. This made the quality and quantity just right. 

Stepping from the hall into the elevator and from the ele- 
vator into the open street-car I tackled a man on the end seat, 
made a rush to the center and settled myself as uncomfort- 
ably as possible by balancing on the narrow seat and propping 
my knees under my chin. There are plenty of cars, they are 
open and the fares are cheap, but the seats were not made to 
fit men of my build. The Brazilian is usually small and sallow 
because he is soaked with coffee, choked with cigarets and 
shrunken with fever and vice. The car passed by the presi- 
dent's palace, bathing beaches and villas to the Botanical Gar- 
den. 

It isn't the Eden garden of Java, Ceylon or India, but is "it" 
in this part of the world. We walked a long distance through 
an avenue of palms that looked like sky-ceiling dusters or 
tall telephone poles in blossom, and came to the arbor home of 
Dea Palma, the goddess of palms. Without placing her palm 
in ours she welcomed us to roam through scenes of floral and 
embowered beauty, cascades and fountains. There was a little 
lake fringed with ferns, flowers and tropic trees. Two storks 
standing in the water I approached, but they did not move, 
and I decided there had been so little legitimate work in their 
profession in the city that they had come out here to die of 
grief and stand a petrified warning to those who substituted 
the word "mistress" for "mother." 

There was only one Dom Pedro just as there was but one real 
Napoleon and Brazil is largely what Dom made it in independence, 
separation of church and state, religious toleration and education. 
His old palace is now a national museum. After wandering 
around the large and lovely grounds we came to the door and 
found it shut because they were getting ready to entertain 
T. R. Once again my Portuguese letter of introduction passed 



TO HELL AND BACK I57 

me. The walls that echoed to Dom's tread were hung with 
spears, blankets, utensils of the savage Indian tribes of Brazil, 
and the many specimens of colored fauna and flora. There 
have been political meteorites that fleshed through the South 
American skies and fell, but the biggest and brightest was Dom 
Pedro. It is significant that the largest meteorite in the world, 
weighing five tons, stands in the doorway of his palace. 

Saturday afternoon we went to a ball game with teams made 
up of Americans. They were business men, but not so fond of 
their position that they wouldn't slip home if their employers 
failed to let them off Saturday to play ball. One firm even 
furnishes autos to some of its help, thus combining business 
with pleasure. I sat in the little grandstand with the wives 
of the players and we were the only spectators with the excep- 
tion of an Englishman here and there who came to return the 
compliment the baseball nine had shown in watching them at 
cricket. 



ART NUDE AND LEWD 



RJ. HAS a library and art gallery. We were not allowed 
to enter the former because we looked like illiter- 
ate gringoes who would wear out the floor without im- 
proving our understanding. The art gallery made 
us welcome. Its closed doors swung to my Sesame letter. 
Rooms of modern French and Spanish pictures attracted us. 
Recent exhibitors were removing their canvas and when we 
thought we had seen everything beautiful, the guard led us 
behind a curtain, through a side-door into a gallery of nudely 
beautiful pictures. It was an Adamless Eden, but the fair 
daughters of Mother Eve seemed neither startled nor ashamed, 
but rather pleased with our appearance, though their painted 
lips plainly told Mrs. "M" there were enough of them without 
her. 

Isn't it shocking that everything is naked but hypocrisy? 
Truth is naked, lies are clothed. Earth's children could be as 
naked as Mother Eve before she ate the apple and as inno- 
cent. Adam did not know he was naked until he had sinned. 
Guilt made fig-leaf aprons necessary for our primal parents. 
It has been so ever since. Innocent babes, boys and girls 



158 T0 HELL AND BACK 

live nude in tropic lands, only wearing clouts or clothes as a 
convenience or comfort. 

In Old World galleries I have seen parents and children 
blush and oggle and run away from statuary and painting, nude 
and strong, sweet and pure, because of lack of training. 

Innocence is not born of ignorance but of information. 
Parents should teach their children personal sex identity and 
relation to the opposite sex and that the great and good God 
has adopted male and female in plant, animal and human life. 

The nude is not necessarily the lewd. Above nature is 
human nature. The body is God's crowning work. Human 
anatomy argues divinity of creation. The artist need not be 
impure who studies a model and seeks to put on canvass what 
existed in the mind of the Creator of the all beautiful. 

We do not need more fig-leaves on the body, but more gray 
matter in the brain to see and censure immoral walking nudes 
on our leading streets and avenues. Their undress dress, foul 
fitting finery, salacious suggestiveness, and devilish drapery are 
more tempting and degrading to those who wear and behold 
them than all the life-models, nude statues and paintings found 
in public galleries or private collections. 

Virtue may sit, stand or ride naked as Godiva clad in purity 
while prude and Puritanical objecting critics may wear a win- 
dow full of clothes and be morally abominably worse. 

A satyr has always good reasons for donning pants and per- 
suading Apollo to do the same. He is called moral, unmindful 
that his smiles are more repulsive than a nude Apollo. 

The body is the organ of the mind and the palace of the soul. 
The wise and virtuous Queen Anne was accustomed to ascend 
the staircase of her chateau at Blois without offense, though she 
saw at the foot of a bracket an indecent carving of a monk and 
nun. Evil to him who evil thinks. 

It is not the great art master, whose beautiful models lead 
him to wander in the forbidden land of impure imagination, but 
the dull, cowardly critic who cannot see soul beneath body and 
so dallies with thoughts of sin he dare not commit. 

When the artist by word, brush, chisel or tone seeks to 
represent the God-given ideal of his genius, the question is not 
whether that ideal is manifestly nude or draped, but whether it 
refines or carries an intellectual and moral ideal. 



TO HELL AND BACK 15* 

The love of art-beauty is as wide as the race and as deep as 
the instinct of religion. Ideals seek to harmonize subjective 
man and objective truth. Right expression of beauty brings 
pleasure and culture. There is no beauty in beastliness. The 
greatest artists have been decent and devout. It is hard to 
imagine a rakish Raphael or adulterous Angelo. 

Art has led from God as well as to him. The brazen serpent, 
symbol of God's mercy, became linked with idolatry and was 
destroyed by the prophet. A later iconoclasm had its basis 
in the fact that in thousands of instances church images and 
paintings of Jesus, Mary and the Apostles had become an end 
instead of a means of worship. 

Art should be simply nature made by man to man the inter- 
preter of God. To seek artistic or animal pleasure against 
God's law, and unchastened by Bible love, is to turn heaven's 
joy into hell's pain and be driven out, wicked, wretched and 
wandering by the angel of Paradise. 

O YOUOUVIDOR! 



ONE can get dizzy or drunk on the Avenida dodging 
autos, looking at the passing beauty show, or walking 
the mosaic sidewalks with their fantastic figures of 
bird and beast. The street the people like best is the 
Ouvidor. The city cut down hundreds of houses and stores to 
widen the Avenida, but no profane hand was ever outstretched 
to widen Rua Ouvidor. It is an old straight, narrow, dingy and 
delightful street, which is always crowded by those who want 
to look or be looked at or to buy and sell something very choice. 
Shop windows are filled with Brazilian diamonds and precious 
stones outrivaling New York and Paris; dried beetles green 
as emeralds; humming-bird feather pictures; floral designs 
made of fish-scales ; religious regalia to illustrate the simplicity 
of the gospel and pretty coral charms of big and little hands 
with thumbs shut in. 

The windows display interesting things, but the most at- 
tractive display, judged by the crowd in front of it, was a wax 
model of a shapely woman with open-work abbreviated under- 
garments, laced and unlaced lingerie and other seductive baits of 
femininity that made me put my hands to my blushing face, 
while I looked through my open fingers. It was the limit, or 



160 T0 HELL AND BACK 

rather without limit, a true to life advertisement that caught the 
would-be purchaser's eye. It offered a fair bargain without 
concealing many of the facts connected with it. 

But I was looking for something else. Entering a gents' 
furnishing store I found the prices as high as the model's dress. 
The proverb, "It's a shame to take the money" has no currency 
here, for they try to take more of it than any city of South 
America. The luxury of diamond gem, gold and silver orna- 
ment is often cheap compared with the price of clothing neces- 
sity. You can get a good diamond for what it costs to put a hat 
on your head, a shirt on your back, a pair of pants on your legs 
and shoes on your feet. As to collar, tie and gloves, that's out 
of the question. Why is the buyer thus robbed? Because the 
merchandise has been brought so far across the Atlantic? Part- 
ly, but mostly because the government needs the money and is 
out with the big mitt to get it. 

A REGATTA 



RJ. is a modern Babylon and we went to its hanging gar- 
dens on Mount Tijuca overlooking sea and city. It is 
a tropical jungle, but the only wild and dangerous thing 
one meets is the auto, with frightful shriek and smell, 
rushing up and down the steep hillside seeking whom it may de- 
vour. 

Sunday came with no rest and with the rest of the profane 
crowd we went to the regatta on beautiful Botafogo bay. The 
grandstand was bright with flags, the band played lively airs, 
while a mob of merrymakers yelled their heads off as the sculls 
darted by like dragon flies. The hoi polloi were on the Beira 
Mar, that six-mile horseshoe curve, wishing and waving good 
luck to the boys tugging at their oars. The people on the 
tugs were firing pistols and leaning over the side to watch the 
race until it seemed we could see their finish. It was a glad 
regatta, but I had sad regrets when I thought of what had 
happened here years ago. The simple native children, who 
would not receive spiritual nourishment and care from the 
Mother Church, were used as kindling wood for holy fires, a 
warning beacon lest others make shipwreck of their faith. Bota- 
fogo means "thrown into the fire" and not "boat in a fog," as I 
thought when I first heard the word. 



TO HELL AND BACK 161 



CHURCH ADVERTISING 



FEELING I should attend some religious service, I went 
to the church that advertises the most. The follow- 
B" * ing ads were published not only on the housetops but 
I on the church steeple: "Scott's Emulsion" for con- 
sumption, and "Tayuya," a "licor" largely used by people who are 
being consumed by the prevailing South American disease of 
syphilis. You see it pays to advertise. The church needed the 
money for repairs and completion and I was surprised that the 
big gilt figure on the spire above these ads wasn't Lydia Pink- 
ham instead of Mary. I hope the sinner sick in body and soul 
can be helped, but there are so many religious and medical 
D. D. dope doctors here that I feel with the prophet Nahum, 
"there is no healing of thy bruise; thy wound is grievous." 

T. R. AT R. J. 



RIO is entertaining and for a week she had been pre- 
paring to receive and entertain Theodore Roosevelt, 
that representative American, even here familiarly 
called 'Teddy." His picture was in the windows, his 
name in the papers. The next morning when he landed I broke 
through the guard and official reception committee, gave him 
the glad hand, pinned an American flag on him and marched up 
the street to the reception room, where he was formally re- 
ceived. He seemed dee-lighted to meet me, as on former occa- 
sions, and when he said he was surprised to find me there I told 
him I had beaten him by six weeks to South America, that all 
the cities wanted to see and hear him, and I believed he could 
do more to make the country understand and appreciate the 
United States than all the distinguished American representa- 
tives who had preceded me or would follow him. 

If the reader is a doubting Thomas and sceptical of this 
interview I can refer him to the secretary of Rio's Y. M. C. A., 
Arthur W. Manuel. He later wrote me, "You will be interested 
to know that the day after you sailed I saw you shaking your 
fist at Roosevelt in a moving picture show. At the landing, 
when we were following Roosevelt, we were included in the 
moving picture man's machine. It is very clear, especially of 
you with your hat in one hand and your little American flag 
in the other hand waving at Roosevelt." 



l@t T HELL AND BACK 

He further wrote that the Y. M. C. A. was fortunate enough 
to have Mr. Roosevelt make the only speech open to the public 
during his stay in Rio, from their platform, and that he gave 
them "the strongest gospel message they had ever heard." The 
speech was published in English by the Journal de Commercio, 
Rio's leading daily. He so thoroughly captured the hearts of 
the people that a business man said, "If this government would 
only give a man like Roosevelt a hundred thousand dollars to sit 
in the Brazilian presidential chair for six months it would be 
the greatest blessing the country ever had." 

T. R.'s visit to Brazil was "nuts" to the cartoonist. I re- 
member one picture where he was giving moral instruction to 
some of Rio's political leaders, telling them that if a nation or 
an individual wished to be great it must practice the common 
place and homely virtues without thought of the heroic crises 
that so seldom come. 

DIVES 

O^THAT last night in Rio! The city was brilliantly 
J lighted, but we saw some shady places to make the 
picture complete. From the bright lighted movie foy- 
ers, where the waiting crowd is furnished with seats 
and music instead of being log-jammed as they are in U. S., "L" 
and I went down the Avenida, through a public park. Its 
main gate opened into a street, not filled with churches, libraries 
and museums, but of aristocratic maisons de joie. There was 
a corner cafe, with a score of well-dressed women sitting at the 
tables, but no men. They seemed social as we passed by and 
beckoned us in. When we went on they followed with a 
loose collection of Spanish, French, German and English oaths. 
That was the only way they could follow us, for there was a 
man on horseback at the street corner prepared to run them 
in if they ventured out. It was eight o'clock and we were the 
only ones on the street and must have looked lorn and lonely, 
for in every doorway stood a besilked, bediamonded, benighted 
beauty who looked compassionately on us and invited us to come 
in and make ourselves at home. 

A long walk brought us to a kind of Leicester square of 
many theaters. Believing they were all either good or bad, we 
entered one and saw and heard a Portuguese comic opera. It 



TO HELL AND BACK 163 

was comical to see some of the red light scenes we had just 
escaped enacted on the stage. Again we went out of the light 
into the night, passing through narrow streets of dives brighter 
and blacker than any we had yet seen. This was the busiest place 
in Rio. Although it was midnight, an unending stream of 
humanity poured up and down the walks, the patrolling police 
charging the crowds time and again. 

I was sorry I had not seen Brazil's men of war, because it 
was foggy when we entered the harbor, but I was sorry to see 
most of them gambling, drinking, going in and out of the 
dives along these streets. Here vice was wholly evil and had 
lost none of its grossness. It was dirty, dowdy and depraved. 
Jack FalstafT would have hurried away as fast as his fat legs 
could carry him and not paused to pity, endure or embrace the 
poor, half-dressed, painted, powdered prostitutes weaving 
shrouds for souls and making their bed in hell. Rio may be- 
lieve with Tokio that the social sin is a necessary evil that can- 
not be exterminated, and therefore should be segregated, but 
the Jap has the sense and decency to quarantine a moral pest- 
house on the outskirts of a city and not locate it by public parks 
and buildings. 

By nature Rio is one of the most beautifully situated cities 
of the world. By human nature it is so wicked that it illustrates 
the idea old as Methusela, "every prospect pleases, and man 
alone, or woman alone, or together are vile." 

THE HUNCHBACK 



T 



HEY say it's lucky to touch a hunchback so the last 
morning we ascended Corcovada, the hunchback, and 
touched his bare rocky shoulder which stooped more 
^.^ than 2,000 feet above Botafogo bay. We started with 
a drink from the snake-headed fountains back of the Avenida 
hotel ; tramped up the stairs to the station ; trammed on the many- 
arched aqueduct over the city; wound up woody slopes where 
perch rich men's villas ; went through feathery forests of flowers, 
foliage and ferns ; stopped at the fountain source where Adam s 
ale is brewed, collected and piped down to the city, and arrived at 
the station where the cog catches you and carries you to the top. 
Here we saw the eighth scenic wonder of the world. Above, be- 
neath and around was a paradise of a panorama. It would have 



164 TO HELL AND BACK 

diverted the attention of Adam and his young wife from the for- 
bidden green apple whose mortal taste gave the world a stomach 
and heart-ache. 'Twas a joy symphony. The sun smiled, the sea 
laughed, the palms clapped their hands, flowers sweetened the air 
while green bugs and blue butterflies tangoed in the tangled 
thicket. This was a sort of Transfiguration Mount where I 
wanted to tabernacle but our ship sailed in a few hours and we 
flew down on the tram from our paradise perch. 

In town I noticed some curiosities I had not seen in the mu- 
seum. Flower women on the curb, black, bare-footed, red-tur- 
baned and rakishly dressed, descended from Pharaoh's fat kine; 
a bilious bunch of bones leaning on its elbow on the street cor- 
ner, wearing a garter-like badge to show it was a policeman on 
duty, and stylish carriages of ladies and long-headed diplomats 
drawn by teams of long-eared mules. 

We told the hotel clerk we were going. I think he passed 
the word along for at our door we met the servants who had 
smiled at us for a week and done little else. Virtue is its own 
reward and if they didn't possess that they got left. I made 
short work of a long bill. It was paid in milreis, well-named, 
for here money runs faster through your pocket than a back- 
woods millrace. 

I was sorry to leave Rio — so much money — for away from 
home it is your best friend and the only one that can bring you 
back again. $ had made arrangements with the big new 
steamer "Vestris" to take us to New York but when the hour 
came for sailing we didn't. There was a hitch in the proceed- 
ings and we were held, not by a Manila rope, but by the fair 
tresses of two damsels who were booked to go with us but 
had not yet come. While the captain was looking at his watch 
the American Consul dashed aboard and asked if the ladies 
had arrived. The perplexed answer was "No." I was wonder- 
ing what the trouble might be, when a Rio police boat bumped 
our port gang and two American girls rushed up crying, "We're 
safe." ''Thank God" cried the American consul as he stepped 
ashore. "Let her go," yelled the captain and the "Vestris" 
swung out from the city, ships, forts and delectable mountains 
for a 17 days' pilgrim's progress. 



TO HELL AND BACK 165 



A WHITE SLAVE MARKET 



SINCE I was one of the first to address the young la- 
dies when they came aboard, and since they seemed 
quite as beautiful as the scenery, and were unaccom- 
panied by any gentleman, I congratulated one of them 
in my ministerial capacity on her being "saved" and asked her 
what she meant for she had almost lost the boat. When we had 
found a lonesome spot on deck with no one around, and after 
the sun had set behind Sugar Loaf and could not see, she told 
me this tale of wicked woe. 

Her name was Joan Shore and her companion's Gladys Wad- 
del. Roy Chandler, a Buenos Aires agent for vaudeville, had 
come to New York and booked them through the Scott-Payne 
agency. He represented conditions better in South than in 
North America, said they could earn fifty dollars a week and 
have all expenses paid if they would "just sing American songs." 
They made the bargain and sailed. Before landing, they learned, 
from someone who knew this agent, that gambling and wine- 
rooms were run in connection with the theatres and that it would 
always be necessary to carry revolvers for protection. When 
they neared Rio and realized their danger they decided not to 
land but to board the "Vestris" for New York. But they were 
nabbed by the police, who work hand in hand with the white- 
slavers, and had it not been for Mr. Roosevelt, the American 
Consul, and some other interested friends, who raised enough 
money to pay their return passage and insisted that the contract 
of Chandler's false promises must be broken, she and her friend 
would have been placed in durance vile for two years according 
to Brazilian law. 

Miss Shore told me every step of this infernal plan to entrap 
them, and hoped that as Chaplain of the Actor's Church Al- 
liance and T. M. A., I would tell and publish it so that other 
young girls might be warned of engagements for amusement 
which is adultery, pleasure which is prostitution and a stage 
life which makes destruction please. 

Babylon had a marriage market for her women. Rio has 
a girl's slave-pen over whose portals is written Dante's hell- 
motto. 



166 



TO HELL AND BACK 



"She has been in South America," is the living epitaph of 
many a poor girl dead in trespasses and sins. 

The white-slaver is the Devil's missionary who lays nets 
which Lucretia cannot avoid and gives baits and bribes that move 
Penelope. South America is the white-slave market of the 
world. She has black slaves in gold mines and rubber camps of 
the interior, and white slaves on the coast who have been 
brought from every country of the world with false promises 
of marriage or respectable employment. 

The story of soul-traffic is old as history ; it includes all races 
and creeds and is found in every clime and country. 

Procurers for what panders to lust and crime have led purity, 
beauty and youth to what seemed a palace of pleasure but 
turned out to be a Pandemonium of memories, regrets, remorse, 
fear, despair and death. 

The baits and traps to catch and ensnare the ignorant and 
unwary are money, dress, society, pleasure, companionship and 
everything which dazzles but to destroy. 

By Creation, Providence and Redemption we are members 
of one common family. We are our brothers' and sisters' keepers. 
If for coin or carnality we traffic in souls and believe with the 
Mohammedan that heaven here and hereafter is pleasure and 
so smile at debauchery and defy death, we will live to shed tears 
hotter than blood, dream dreams that reflect the flames of a 
literal hell and have a moral nature as hideous and deformed as 
pur bodies, so twisted with disease that the undertaker will be 
compelled to change the shape of the coffin to fit our limbs. 

BAY OF SAINTS AND SINNERS 

THE farther North we went the warmer it grew and 
after a three days' sail of more than 700 miles we 

I MS ' si nners anchored in All Saint's Bay. 

jfeSeHl Through a friend who talked Spanish and wanted 
to go ashore, "L" and I bargained for a sailboat to carry us three 
miles to Bahia, the former capital and oldest city of Brazil. At 
the bottom of the gang was a little boat filled with parrots and 
monkeys which a native wanted us to buy. We didn't need them 
for the men who were to take us ashore were already talking 
and acting as if they were members of that same green-feathered 



TO HELL AND BACK 1(57 

and that long-tailed family. From the first it was plain they in- 
tended to charge us not by the mile but hour. They tacked and 
we attacked, they blamed the heavens and we blamed them — 
and if all the hot air between us had been centered on the sail it 
would have taken us but a short time to make fast to the landing. 

Bahia has a down-town by the water and an up-town 300 feet 
above which you may reach by foot, horse, cable car or by hy- 
draulic elevator. 

We left the landing, where Portuguese, negroes, half-breeds 
and every other kind of colored roustabout were running about 
and handling coffee, cocoa, sugar, tobacco, hides and palm-fibre 
used for street-brooms. Passing through the main business 
street with its substantial stores where they sell diamonds and 
cigarets, giving a prayer and copper to the blind, lame, dirty 
beggars who for the love of Mike or Mary importuned us, we 
came to the "lift." It took us to a higher plane whence we 
could look down on the broad deep bosom of the bay, where the 
anchored ships rose and fell, or look up at the syphilitic signs 
that decorated the station, walls and roofs of public buildings, 
thus confirming my belief in the reputation of Bahia as the "re- 
ligious centre of Brazil." 

These signs of civilization were not only in big black letters 
but in colored picture posters representing semi-nude men and 
women in the various disgusting stages of the disease. 

A recent deluge had floated away the sidewalks, undermined 
the houses and washed out the streets but left untouched whole 
rows of buildings consecrated to the worship of Venus. Purely 
by accident we strayed into this street and from what we saw 
and heard made as hasty a retreat as Joseph from Potiphar's 
wife, finding refuge in the Cathedral whose big dome shines 
like a gem in the hill's crown. 

Bahia has 67 varieties of the same kind of church built 
by poor ignorant worshippers. They believed they served God 
by living in hovels, that by piling up palaces for Him they would 
enjoy a prominent place at heaven's banquet table, and be happy in 
proportion as they stinted and starved themselves to feed a lot 
of indolent, incontinent priests. As an illustration of poetic, 
practical justice it is pleasing to know that when the government 
waked up to a knowledge of the cause of its material, mental and 



168 TO HELL AND BACK 

moral poverty it took possession of the monasteries and con- 
vents and turned them into free hospitals, libraries and schools. 



THE SOUTHERN CROSS 



IT T is often difficult here to see the Southern cross on 
M land and sea, even when it is pointed out to you, but in 
Brazil you need not be an astronomer or look through 
spectacles or telescope to see it day and night. The 
true cross is not beheld in the sky or on a church spire but in 
the mixed population, black and white, native and European. 
Cupid is a pickaninny here. I would not be a fake fortune teller 
if I looked at the left hand of Brazil's 17 millions and predicted a 
"dark" future ahead for her. The proverb "Love is blind" 
has been revised to read "Love is color-blind." When you cross 
the Line the color line is lost and it doesn't matter if the blood in 
your veins is red, white, blue or black. If you are a negro, born 
free or liberated, you have social, religious and political equality 
and if qualified, can get into any private or public position of 
honor and trust. The Emancipation Act was more effectively 
carried out in Brazil than ours in the South or England's in her 
colonies. 

One leads a horse to water but can't make him drink. I 
found a negro who hadn't drunk at the Pierian spring of Bahia's 
public library, normal school or university. He was cooking his 
dinner on the sidewalk and when he saw my kodak he bolted 
into his shanty door and no pleading or bribe could draw him 
out. As the food began to burn he shoved his wife out to tend 
it, proving she was much more afraid of him than of me. The 
smell of his dinner made us hungry and we retired to a little 
cafe in the Plaza. The word "chocolate" was printed over the 
door and windows. We ordered some but learned it was only 
served after dark and so compromised by each taking a big 
juicy pineapple, sliced and spread thick with sugar, and a dozen 
ripe, luscious bananas. My, it was delicious when we got it, 
but the wait was so long I am sure the servant was descended 
from the Brazilian sloth. 

We settled our bill and our banquet with a ride around town. 
There were some autos of American make but the roads were 
such Brazilian mud-holes we took a car that was sure of its 
track in the middle of the street. I am inclined to think a 



TO HELL AND BACK 169 

chauffeur felt slighted that we didn't hire his car for as we 
turned a corner he whizzed by, splashing the seats and passengers 
in the street car as if he were a mud geyser. Soon the narrow, 
dirty streets were exchanged for wide, green fields, suburb villas 
and gardens and we found how beautiful Bahia was, when you 
got away from it. With this last thought we returned to the Plaza, 
shot down the elevator shaft and headed for the dock, loitering 
long enough to see the market, visit the stores full of native 
feather work and lace finery, be dazzled with bushels of big Bra- 
zilian diamonds bright and flashy enough for a coast lighthouse, 
and buy, for my tobacco lovers at home, boxes of cigarets and 
cigars very choice and very cheap. I hated to encourage this 
"bad habit" among my good friends and for various reasons was 
not sorry that the law limited me to 100 cigars and 300 cigarets. 
Our pirates were waiting and quickly sailed us beyond the 
big new breakwater to the "Vestris." At sundown we heaved 
anchor and a sigh of relief to get out of the Bay of Saints and 
whales and away from the city of churches, cigarets and dam- 
aged goods. 

BRAZIL'S BLESSINGS 



BRAZIL has much room tor improvement for her area 
is larger than the United States. Army and navy are 
a joke but she can laugh last at any invader with her 
trocha jungles, her fever lyddite, her bug dirigibles, her 
mosquito aeroplanes, her insect infantry, her alligator dread- 
naughts, her snake destroyers and electric eel torpedoes- 
Half of Brazil's 22 millions are black and indolent? yet they 
can't starve if they want to. The things we work hard to make 
money enough to buy Nature has planted in their back yard. 
Coffee and sugar to drink, grain, beef, fruit and nuts to eat, cot- 
ton and rubber to wear, tobacco to smoke, and gold and dia- 
monds to sport with. 

Brazil likes the U. S. In her trouble with Argentina Presi- 
dent Cleveland decided in her favor. Her constitution and ju- 
diciary are much like ours as are her ideas of the separation 
of church and state, civil marriage, individual freedom, public 
education and universal suffrage. 

It is the Yankee more than anyone else who is enabling Bra- 
zil to develop her resources by building the Madeira-Mamore 



170 TO HELL AND BACK 

railroad and saving a month's time to shippers by going way 
around the Madeira river rapids. The line extends from Porto 
Velho on the Madeira to Villa Bella in Bolivia. In Rio I met a 
Minneapolitan, a former member of my congregation, who Lad 
worked for months on this railway by the river and in the 
jungle. Possibly he was trying to forget me and my sermons. 
He told me of the vermin-infested boats, the hell-heat of the 
tropics and the moisture and malaria that laid its fever hand on 
you and crumpled you up like a piece of paper. Like the Pan- 
ama railway the road-bed was one continuous grave, a dead 
man for every tie. Often a man who wanted to die, couldn't. 
At night he had to sleep under a net to keep the bugs and vam- 
pire bats from bleeding him to death and eating him up. He 
began the day, not with prayer but with a dose of quinine. What 
he first thought was the call of the breakfast bell was that of 
the doctor who made him come and take his 60 grains of quinine 
or have his wages docked and be sent back to the dock. An- 
other unlooked for pleasure was to buy a ticket and coffin when 
you started down the Amazon, so that if you died your body 
could be returned. If you survived and came back with your 
coffin as a trunk, you got a rebate. 

Poor C , like many another stranded Yankee down here, 

wanted to get away and couldn't. He was economical and re- 
ceived a good salary but spent all of it for his board. Hun- 
dreds like him, who have listened to S. A. financial fairy tales, 
had their passage prepaid and other money advanced them 
for incidental expense, and then found they could only make a 
bare living wage. They were never able to pay back the money 
loaned them, hadn't faith to walk on the water, it was too far to 
swim home, and had to remain year after year like slaves in 
Egyptian bondage. 

WIND JAMMERS 

Tl HE seven days and nights to Trinidad, we had warm 
I weather, and warmer discussions between two ton- 
sured, shovel-hatted priests, who got on at Bahia, and 
a young Frenchman who had graduated from a Paris 
university and taken a three years' post-graduate course as a 
gaucho, or cowboy in Patagonia. The subject was generally 
love, marriage and divorce. It was two against one, an old 



TO HELL AND BACK 171 

Hollander and middle aged Italian versus a young Frenchman. 
The former argued love was spiritual, and Frenchy insisted it 
was a sensation. Since the fathers had spent their life in the 
celibate cloister, and the young man his last four years among 
the bleak solitudes with sheep and cattle as his companions, 
they were excellently prepared to hotly maintain their widely 
different conclusions on the holiness of Hymen and the carnal- 
ity of Cupid. 

Three times a day they sat down before a white table-cloth 
of truce and drank each other's health in wine, beer and yerba 
mate. 

MATE AND GAUCHO 



THIS last drink is to Paraguay what wine is to France. 
Frenchy liked it and was taking it in bulk to New York 
to introduce as a substitute for tea. He often urged us 
to drink it with him. There are thousands of acres of 
it in Paraguay. It grows on a bush, the natives pick the branches 
and hold them over a fire until the leaves are dry, when they 
crush them to a powder in their hands. This powder is put in a 
cup made of cocoanut, gourd or silver, boiling water is poured 
over it, a handful of sugar is thrown in and instead of drinking 
it like a cup of tea you insert a tube of gold, silver or bamboo 
and suck it as you would soda through a straw. It was simply 
delicious ! The odor was of the Monday family wash and had 
the flavor of the sage and catnip tea mother used to make in the 
spring-time to tone me up. He presented me with several pack- 
ages and I have used them, in my curio collection. 

Next to the mate he loved his saddle, spurs, lariat and pon- 
cho for he had lived the life of a gaucho and could ride and lasso 
like a native. The true gaucho, or S. A. cowboy, was a part of 
his horse, but like the centaur has become extinct. He was big 
as the steer he lassoed, brave as the Indians he fought and bad 
as cards, drink and murder could make him. Booted and 
spurred he was the knight of the pampas and with his boleta, a 
stone fastened to a strip of leather, he hurled defiance at the 
head or feet of the man or animal he opposed. When I com- 
plained of my quarters Frenchy consoled me by telling me what 
he had shared and seen. He had slept in a poncho on the 
ground with the sky for a blanket. 



172 TO HELL AND BACK 

"GETTING BACK" ON THE LAMPORT HOLT LINE 



IT HAVE sailed around the world, across the At- 
Jl lantic sixteen times, over the Inland Seas of Europe, 
OpS the "seven seas" of Kipling and some more, on as many 
gigy ships. To all this has been added the trip around S. A., 
but to the Lamport Holt Line, which plies from B. A. to New 
York, the line of Shakespeare most fittingly applies, "I am 
cabin' d, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in to saucy doubts and fears." 

When we bought our tickets the agent told us that second 
class on the L. and H. was better than the first class of West 
Coast boats. We sailed from B. A. to R. J. on the R. M. S. P. 
"Amazon" and as soon as we landed went to the L. and H. office, 
showed our second cabin ticket and were assigned room 90 on 
the "Vestris." This was eight days before she was due. When 
she docked, our baggage was put in room 90 and we went 
aboard two hours before she sailed. When the purser looked at 
our tickets he said, "This is a mistake. You have been assigned 
a first cabin on a second cabin ticket, our agent, who made the 
mistake, will be here in a few minutes and I will see what can 
be done." The agent came and went, the boat pulled out and 
we and our baggage were dumped — in a room which the band 
was forced to vacate, at the bottom of the dining stair and open- 
ing on the bath and lavatory. The room was small, dark and 
penetrated by a ventilation pipe from the hold which perfumed 
the air with reeking odor of hides. The ship-doctor was later 
forced to admit it and tried in vain to correct it. In addition to 
this we were on the port, the hot land side, with no electric fan. 
Thus was illustrated the Scripture, "The first shall be last" be- 
cause we who were the first to apply, eight days before, had 
been mistakenly put in the "first" cabin and were the last to 
come in the "second" which was full. 

"L" and I could endure this stifling, smelly stateroom but it 
was an outrage on Mrs. "M" and I asked what they would do to 
correct their error. The purser said he was "sorry" to say no 
correction could be made unless I paid him an additional $300, 
the difference in fare between first and second class. I told 
him it was a rotten mistake and a rotten room — third class, not 
second, but as a minister I would bear the trial, as a lecturer 



TO HELL AND BACK 173 

advertise the line, as a writer roast it, and as a traveler tell tour- 
ists to visit South America by way of England. 

The L. and H. Line stands for lousy and hungry. There 
was no privacy in our room, and we were nightly visited by 
bugs. Like the Indian fakir who lies down on his bed of spikes 
or the Brahmin martyr who offers his body to devouring vermin, 
I went to bed. Vermin accompanied us across the floors and 
up the stairs and our uniform and meagre bill of fare at the ta- 
ble was shared by uninvited cockroaches. 

Our "Grand Promenade" and saloon deck occupied a hun- 
dred feet on each side of the stern. Here we could walk on each 
others feet, sit musing 'mid a babel of Russian, Portuguese, 
Spanish and Italian tongues; enjoy the glory of the Atlantic, 
sun by day and moon by night; drink in the greasy odor of the 
kitchen, the sweaty smell of the laundry and the disinfecting in- 
cense of the hospital. 

Sea-port cities are cesspools of sin where the Devil's imagina- 
tion is overtaxed to invent new vices for his worshippers. At 
B. A. our boat lay for two weeks and when she pulled out was 
a floating hospital of sailors rotten with disease. We lost time, 
not only because the coal was poor but for the reason there were 
not enough stokers to shovel it. These were our "palm garden" 
surroundings and in their midst was the small saloon which 
served as the music room, the library, lounge and social parlor. 
This was a dandy "multum in parvo" and its height of enjoy- 
ment was reached when the heavy rains drove us all in and 
everybody was forced to carry on all these social functions at 
once. The band further put us on the ragged edge of despair 
with its ragtime while the unappreciative card-players kept time 
with their fists as they threw down the cards with a fortissimo, 
"Uno, duo, tres, quatro." 

Noah had his ark, and if his animals had the "accommo- 
dation" we had they must all have kicked like mules. They say 
a rat deserts a sinking ship. I didn't see any on the "Vestris" 
and concluded the Rodent family, rather than "bear those ills" 
they had on board had jumped overboard to "others they knew 
not of." 



174 TO HELL AND BACK 



NUTS 



OF course there were the usual deck sports when we 
crossed the Equator whose foolery must make Nep- 
tune sick. Although we "seconds" were privileged to 
look at the "firsts," we were not permitted to share 
their pastimes. But the real deck "sports" we saw every even- 
ing, were the "swell" American and Brazil negro diamond mer- 
chants, and the flashy-dressed, low-necked, high-skirted, French- 
heeled women who smoked cigarets and languidly and loosely 
stretched their anatomy on the easy chairs of the palm-garden. 
Sunday we had Brazilian nuts for dessert, and why not ? Bra- 
zil is the land of nuts. Here are some of the many varieties: 
The exploring "nut" who returns from the "Brazilian wilder- 
ness" where he sailed on undoubted rivers and on land or savage 
shore had more wonderful adventures than Alice in Fairyland; 
the naturalist "nut" who leaves home and native land to risk his 
life for the ignus fatuus fame of linking his name with the 
discovery of a blukiferous bug or a bentankicus berry; the sta- 
tistic "nut", who loses himself and reader in Amazonian thickets 
of useless information; the financial "nut," whose eye in a fine 
frenzy rolling, gives name to airy nothing. 

A nut Sundae would have been nice to finish the dessert, 
but since I couldn't get it this side of New York, I was satisfied 
with the memory of a special kind of Nut Sunday they have 
there: The Sunday newspaper, a chestnut, wormy and rotten; 
the preacher, a hardshell hickory nut; the church-visitor, a 
walnut; the critical deacon, a peanut; the Charleyboy masher, 
on Fifth Avenue, a butter-nut ; the brown-eyed flirt, a hazel nut ; 
the tango couples at Coney beach, beechnuts ; the autofiends and 
the helpless they run over, cracked cocoanuts. This ,was my 
Sunday sermon and the text from the Song of Solomon, "I 
went down into the garden of nuts." There was Sunday service 
on board, the first time since we had left New York. It was 
read by the purser in the first cabin — but seven days had dug a 
kind of impassable gulf between the Dives bow and Lazarus 
stern of the "Vestris." 

Perhaps a hell worse than Dante or Milton ever imagined 
would be one where poor souls would be compelled to read 
this purser's dull service. 



TO HELL AND BACK 175 

The lights of Pernambuco twinkled to us across the water 
like stars across the sea of space. Its other name is Recife 
but by any name is just as sweet for it is the sugar port of 
South America. A coral reef like the rim of a sugarbowl en- 
closes it. There is a lot of sand in it and incoming ships reef 
their sails on approach. Pernambuco is the nearest S. A. port to 
Europe and since the cargo is not only sugar but rum the sailors 
make the most of it by mixing it in the form of a punch. 

We passed Para at the mouth of the Amazon, the world's 
greatest rubber port. I rubbered with open-mouth but couldn't 
see it. 



G 



"THREE OF A KIND" 

UIANA lies on the coast between Brazil and Venezuela. 
It is under three flags, the British Union Jack, the 
French Tri-Color and the horizontal red, white and 
blue of Holland. The colors of the three flags are in 
our Old Glory and in spite of the Monroe Doctrine about Euro- 
pean possessions in S. A., our relations are friendly. 

I didn't care to stop at French Guiana for I didn't know 
when I could get away. It is a penal colony. The climate is 
hot, its many varieties of pepper are hotter, Cayenne is the 
capital, and its criminals are hottest in their heart's desire to 
get back to their beautiful France. In harmony with all these 
warm surroundings is Devil's Island near by where Dreyfus 
through military jealousy and Jewish race prejudice was impris- 
oned. Zola and others interceded when he was brought home, 
retried and finally acquitted. Nature tried to sweeten up this 
tropical prison-house by producing a rose-wood tree whose oil 
is extracted and exported to Paris as an attar of roses. How- 
ever, no forest of rose trees or pampas of flowers can sweeten 
the stench of this Parisian scandal. 

The Dutch are good gardeners but the colony they planted in 
Guiana hasn't thrived as their East India colonial possession. 
The pests on the banana, sugar-cane and cocoa, and the pestifer- 
ous atmosphere surrounding 4,000 whites among 70,000 blacks 
put a blight on prosperity. Visitors to Paramaribo, the capital, 
speak of the old town and its one avenue shaded by mahogany 
trees and ebony Creoles. The only sweetness and light here is 
sugar and gold and that is exported. 



176 



TO HELL AND BACK 



Our boat didn't stop at Georgetown, the capital of British 
Guiana, though there are things worth seeing. I don't refer 
to the many Hindus and negroes, or the products of sugar, rub- 
ber, rice, rum and diamonds, but to the Kaietur Falls in the for- 
est interior. From a width at the brink of 369 feet it makes a 
sheer drop of 741 feet. Niagara is some falls, but this is five 
times as high and takes a fall out of it. 

TRINIDAD 



THE island of Trinidad was once a part of Venezuela but 
broke away, and I don't blame it. Yes, Columbus dis- 
mmM covered it as he did everything else, except America. 
JsisfiS He saw the three weird sister mountains, and as usual, 
the less religious he was, the more inclined he was to give re- 
ligious names to everything he saw, and called the island La 
Trinidad after the Holy Trinity. 

A century later Sir Walter Raleigh got the gold-fever and 
started for his claim in El Dorado. He stopped here at some 
wayside inn and wrote tales to his home-town paper about a 
fish that wore armour, another that played a kind of trumpet, 
a crab that climbed trees and stole fruit, oysters that grew on 
mangrove trees, streams of tar and lakes of pitch. He was a 
good press-agent and must have drawn a full house when he 
went home. I had been here four years before and the Pitch 
Lake was the only one of these marvels I had seen. Hoping 
to find the others I entered the Dragon's Mouth, filled with 
islands and the mad water of the muddy Orinoco, and went 
ashore. 

We ran the gauntlet of negro hack-drivers and gay-dressed 
women who tried to sell us baskets of oranges, yams, bananas 
and pineapples ; walked the main street ; loafed under the shade 
trees; wandered through warehouses full of cocoa-beans; had 
our pictures taken by the park statue of Columbus, shopped for 
shark canes and curios, hummingbird and humbug jewelry; took 
a delightful drive to the Maraval Reservoir; met a bull, who, 
enraged by my red face, chased me across the Queen's Park Sa- 
vannah ; rested on the steps of the English Governor's residence 
and for a card left the American flag ; admired his Botanic gar- 
den; trolleyed through tropical beauty towards the Blue Basin; 
rode through hot Cooley town and kodaked naked children; 






*5«^ 




' 



TO HELL AND BACK I77 

went into the Museum and stood reverently before relics of the 
tragic Scott expedition and saw the clothing that had covered 
with warmth and glory the body and heart of Dr. Atkinson, who 
lives in Trinidad. 

HOT COOLEY TOWN 

V f* I OOLEY town looks like a section of India. The Brit- 
l W^ 1 ish government hires Hindu men and women to come 
lE©S2I ^ rom ^ e ^ ast I nc ^ es an d work for five years with the 
Ift-nr^l privilege of returning after that time if they wish. 
Many remain. The men never interested me very much with 
their turbans made of a bolt of cloth, and their small trunks 
which contain several napkins, but the women are attractive 
and look like an animated jewelry store with silver bracelets on 
wrists and ankles, a horseshoe lucky piece around their neck, 
a gold stud on one side of their nostril and a big hoop ring 
through their nose. Often the wealth of husbands and lovers 
is not placed in the bank but on the back of their women. I saw 
men at work in little shops. One picked up a piece of silver with 
his toes and placed it on a small anvil using one hand to guide 
and the other to hammer. He made six light rings of silver, 
looped each to the other and then braided them in such a way as 
to form a pretty finger ring. It was a puzzle. Altogether it was a 
ring, separated it looked like a section of a dog chain. 

Trinidad is Nature's hot-house for rare plants, flowers and 
trees. It is the home of "warm babies", rum, sugar, Angostura 
bitters, cocoa and coffee. The natives have a warm time by day 
working with rubber, timber and cocoanuts, a warmer time by 
night with their pleasures, and the warmest time of all at La 
Brea digging asphaltum in Pitch Lake. 

Four summers' heat had gone since I was here, but not the 
memory of the hottest roast of my life. Stepping off the 
"Oceana" on the pier we walked up a little hill for nearly a 
mile under a broiling sun and over a steaming earth, between 
pineapple patches and native huts where scores of bareheaded 
negro women and children stood looking and laughing at us as 
we toiled along in our white suits, green-lined cork hats and 
white umbrellas, panting, perspiring and profanely wondering 
where in blank we were going. 



178 TO HELL AND BACK 

THE LAKE OF FIRE 



WE soon saw, for there before us was a big black-face 
lake of over a hundred acres with palm and jungle tree 
whiskers around it and shallow streams like sweat 
flowing over it. When I walked across the surface 
to see the men at work, it sunk in and smelled out at every 
step like a summertime street in good old St. Louis. The 
negroes were digging in the spongy black mass with their picks 
and I gave the boss fifty cents to let me head the gang. After I 
had dug out one piece a native put it in a little hand-car, shoved 
it along the track till it was picked up by a cable, run down and 
emptied in the hold of a ship at the wharf . I felt I had done a 
day's work and quit. 

This solid lake is not of volcanic but of mineral oil forma- 
tion. Like the widow's cruse the more you take out the more 
you have, for the trench the men dig by day is filled up the next 
morning. 

Without any classical allusion to Homer or Virgil, or quota- 
tion from Dante and Milton, the sweltering heat, sulphurous 
smell, and blistering pitch the poor devils were digging with 
their pitchforks, was hell. I felt that if the infernal regions 
were ever full, or closed for repairs, Pitch Lake could be used 
as a temporary annex. 

EGRET FIENDS 

MET an interesting young American at Trinidad with 
a suit case filled with egrets worth five thousand dol- 
lars and a heart full of regrets because he could not 
take them to New York on account of the Audubon 
bill. He had hunted herons on the Amazon and Orinoco for 
their egrets and had a small heron farm in Venezuela that net- 
ted him fifteen hundred dollars a year. The birds can be raised 
like ostriches and the feathers plucked out one by one with no 
more pain to the bird than to pull a hair from your own head. 
The heron egrets appear when the mother bird is nesting. Cruel 
natives get in their canoes and paddle among the rushy swamps 
where the birds are nesting in their wild state. Instead of 
gently removing an egret they grab the bird by the neck with one 
hand, pull out a whole handful of feathers with the other and 




TO HELL AND BACK 179 

tie the screaming bird by a leg to a tree. Her cries attract hun- 
dreds of herons which are shot down and stript of their feathers. 
Because of this abominable cruelty that threatens to exter- 
minate so graceful and beautiful a bird the American branch 
of the Audubon society said, "Let European beauties wear 
egrets if they will and show the barbaric savagery of their 
feather-decked sisters on the Amazon, but they don't crown the 
heads of American women with much beauty." Uncle Sam 
said "Amen" and prohibited their importation. 

"CARAMBA" 

STERNE, in his "Tristam Shandy," tells of an abbess 
and a sister who feared to pronounce a certain word 
because it was a venial sin, but each said half and 
diluted it into no sin at all. In Venezuela I heard of 
three pious friars who were mad at a lazy mule that lay down 
and spoiled their luggage. They wanted to use the profane 
word "caramba," and to dissipate its deviltry one of them said 
"ca," another "ram" and the last "ba." There were times in 
my journey to La Guayra, Caracas, Valencia, Victoria and 
Puerto Bello when I felt like using the same expressive ejacula- 
tion, not at the mules but at the men. I was providentially re- 
lieved by my three traveling companions, Hecht, Gottschalk and 
Birch, any one of whom was willing to assume the whole per- 
sonal responsibility and say the whole word by himself, not 
once but many times. Hecht was a corking good fellow whose 
grandfather invented the patent cork on bottles ; Gottschalk, the 
musical distiller with "tony" liquor; Birch, the buggy carriage 
and rickshaw maker who brought people home at night after 
they had uncorked too many bottles. Rough weather from 
Panama had made me sick and I was green as the water in the 
bay, but from the time I touched shore at La Guayra these three 
friends never deserted me. 



A PUNK PORT 

HIS little town is Venezuela's chief seaport lying at 

the foot of the Silla mountain, a spur of the Andes. 

There were ships in the harbor; just above the beach 

little white-faced, red-headed houses nestling among 

cocoanut palms, banana trees, sugarcane and coffee plants ; back 



180 TO HELL AND BACK 

of the town a small fort that looked as if it couldn't withstand 
a severe attack of the measles, but has survived quakes and 
bombs, and a bull-ring that had often rung with the applause 
of the pious pleasure-seekers who adjourned there after church. 
My stay was short, but long enough to melt under the scald- 
ing heat ; sniff the odor of defunct vegetables ; wonder whether 
yellow fever or bubonic plague, frequent visitors here, would 
want me to stay over ; have my patience taxed by custom house 
delay and pocketbook overtaxed because I had landed with a 
handbag ; and raise my empty hands to beggars and lottery-ticket 
vendors to show I had already been held up and had nothing 
for them. Here there is a church built from the swindling 
sale of lottery tickets in violation of the command, 'Thou shalt 
not steal," and another church from the fines imposed on the 
poor parishioners because they swore "Caramba" every time 
they saw their lottery church and the priests who brought them 
bad luck. Nevertheless these dark and discontented looking 
little people save enough to smoke cigarets and wear jewelry 
even if they can't afford to go to the capital or sport very much 
at Macuto, the nearby seaside resort. 

Transportation facilities from La Guayra to Caracas have 
been somewhat improved since Sir Francis Drake ran amuck 
in La Guayra. He robbed and ravaged the city, stuck the rowels 
in his mule, climbed into La Silla, the "saddle," zigzagged 3,000 
feet to Caracas, where he confiscated the wives, wine and wealth 
of the citizens and kept open house for his soldiers, helped him- 
self to a million dollars of pin-money which he stuck on the 
backs of his men and mules and carried back to La Guayra, 
where he loaded it on shipboard and sailed away. 

I clambered into a coach that held 23 and was pulled by a 
little locomotive on a 3-foot gauge 23 miles 9,000 feet up to Cara- 
cas, 3,000 feet in 3 hours. It was a beautiful ride from sea and 
city, by flowers, fruit, foliage and forests, through tropical valleys 
and ravines, and mountain roads with their loaded burros, silver- 
spurred horsemen and straw-hatted natives with the trusty ma- 
chete warranted to shave, cut and kill. 



TO HELL AND BAC& 181 



CARACAS 



EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWELVE was a year of 
shake-ups, Napoleon in Russia, Perry on Erie who later 
died in Trinidad, and an earthquake in Caracas that 
shook the souls out of twelve thousand people and the 
life out of business and politics. Since then in spite of revolu- 
tions, fires and more quakes the people have had time to settle 
down and settle up. 

I was put in the Gran Hotel and in a room with barred 
windows looking out on a patio of palms and flowers. Here I 
saw a round, raised cement tank beside which were two big 
stones. For aught I knew it was a mortar to shoot stone at any 
intruder. I was told it was a laundry corner where the clothes 
were washed and dried. Why my windows had these bars I 
couldn't understand. There was nothing in the room worth 
stealing. Any man who occupied it would not be considered 
worth robbing. There was no pretty girl for any robber Romeo 
to steal and the iron bars were so far apart they were useless 
as screens to prevent any festive flea or murderous mosquito 
from entering. Escaping after supper I met my three friends 
and we stole away to see the town. We looked in on clubs, 
loitered in cafes, listened to park music and availed ourselves 
of the stranger's privilege of staring at and speaking to some of 
the beautiful women who came by in pairs and peaches, this last 
act being regarded as rude or insulting. 

THE LADY AND THE BULL 



THINGS were pretty quiet and they had to be for the 
police carried Mauser rifles instead of billy clubs, and 
Wmm to improve their poor marksmanship required but 
JBaBgil slight provocation to use you as a target. For the tour- 
ist's benefit and "bolivars" (five to the dollar) a bullfight was 
hastily arranged. We piled into the bull-ring. Four bulls, each 
one looking more sick and scared than the other, were brought 
in, tormented and killed. There was little excitement until a 
female matador appeared dressed in a red regalia that made Mr. 
Durham so mad he started to pitch her over the fence. She 
stumbled and fell, trying to get away, and just as the bull started 
to gore her skirts some gallant matadors ran out with red scarfs. 



132 TO HELL AND BACK 

While the animal was studying their color and style the woman 
picked up her skirts and vanished and the bull was vanquished. 

This was a thrill I hadn't felt in Spain and my heart almost 
stopped beating. When I recovered and turned around I found 
a lady of our party, who had been sitting next to me, in a dead 
faint from fright. I lifted her up, her head fell on my shoulder 
and when she came to my three male friends offered to help, 
but I had succeeded so well single armed that I refused. Relin- 
quishing my hold I surrendered her to a matronly member of 
the party, went back to my prison hotel and fell asleep to dream, 
not like Bunyan of Paradise and its "shining ones," but that my 
room was a bull-ring and the ghost of the murdered bull charged 
me because he madly imagined the girl I had resuscitated on 
the seat was the one who had been rescued in the arena. 

The rising sun paints a pretty picture of Caracas and its 
beautiful surroundings of mountain, vale and gardens. A three- 
hour victoria drive showed us many objects of interest. The 
Paraiso suburb; the National University with Gothic architec- 
ture spread over a square and housing the big library and de- 
partments of science, theology, law and medicine; the Federal 
capitol domed on top and decorated inside with a panoramic 
picture of the battle of Carabobo, when the Venezuelans filled 
the Spaniards full of tobasco sauce; the "Yellow House," Casa 
Amarilla, of the yellower president Castro; his private Mira- 
flores home where he conducted orgies rank as Rome was ever 
guilty of ; the National Theatre, where the poor get good seats 
for small pay ; and the Pantheon where rests the immortal Gen- 
eral Bolivar. 

OUTCAST CASTRO 



WHEN I was here Castro's popularity was on the tobog- 
gan. He is said to be half-white and half-Indian, but 

from what I heard of him he was two-thirds devil. 

Short, swarthy, dark-haired and eyed, he could not 
only herd and drive cattle but men and women as well. His na- 
tional and international revolutionary nature is well known but 
the story of his private life with its mean motives, cowardly 
conduct, jealous disposition, itching palm, hatred of any influen- 
tial class, and licentious career on whose Priapus altar was sacri- 
ficed the pure wife or virgin daughter of any one he took a 



TO HELL AND BACK 183 

fancy to, was the talk of the town and country. Don Juan was 
an ascetic monk in comparison. 

Castro's actions spoke louder than his words. If he ever 
prayed I think he must have offered something like this : 

"My Father which art in Hell, powerful be thy name. 

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in Venezuela as it is 
in Hell. 

Give me my daily bread, booze and beef whether everybody 
else starves or not. 

And forgive me my debts but not as I forgive my debtors. 

And tempt me into revolutions with my neighbors, but de- 
liver me from the evil of defeat ; for thine and mine is the king- 
dom, and the power, and the glory, forever, Amen." 

CHURCH AND STATE 

THE Cathedral is the usual South American whited sep- 
ulchre, without the beauty of the nearby marble monu- 
ments in the Campo Santos. People worship in the 
naves of the Cathedral chapel Sunday and are knaves 
in the streets Monday. They are long on creed and short on 
conduct, fluent in faith and slow in science. Many are illegiti- 
mate because wedding fees were so high. If a man did marry 
he wasn't supposed to be making the most of life unless he had 
a mistress on the side. Bad boys and girls bear the name of 
Jesus, Mary, John or some New Testament saint. 

In many of the churches were miraculous images whose wor- 
ship effected no miraculous change in the morals of the worship- 
pers. "Like priest, like people," was so illustrated in the 
ignorance and immorality of the people that when Guzman 
Blanco, a Roman Catholic, came into power he expelled the 
Jesuits, monks and nuns ; confiscated church and monastic prop- 
erty for the benefit of the government ; abolished parish schools 
and declared the civil right of marriage was the only legal form ; 
opened the cemeteries to Jews and heretics alike; deprived the 
priests of their fees and power and erected the Capitol on the 
site of one of the oldest and largest convents in South America. 
His official declaration of independence and repudiation of 
Rome's authority was not only the first in Venezuela but in 
South America. Where he led others have since followed. His 
message to Congress is a classic : "I have taken upon myself the 



184 TO HELL AND BACK 

responsibility of declaring the church of Venezuela independent 
of the Roman Episcopate, and ask that you further order that 
parish priests shall be elected by the people, the bishop by the 
rectors of the parish and the archbishops by Congress, returning 
to the uses of the primitive church founded by Jesus Christ and 
his Apostles. Such a law will not only resolve the clerical ques- 
tion, but will be besides a grand example for the Christian 
Church of republican America hindered in her march towards 
liberty, order and progress by the policy, always retrograde, of 
the Roman Church ; and the civilized world will see in this act 
the most characteristic and palpable sign of advance in the re- 
generation of Venezuela." Instead of placing the document on 
the table or kicking it under a chair Congress received it with 
patriotic and pious pleasure, declaring it had already begun to 
elaborate the law which his excellency had asked it to frame. 

General Guzman Blanco ruled Venezuela nineteen years, and 
in spite of his faults was a most successful ruler, a practical 
student and a brave soldier. He was vain enough to have the 
words "The illustrious American" painted on his picture and 
carved in his statues. That he "dissipated anarchy, established 
the liberty, peace and prosperity of the republic at home as well 
as its dignity abroad" is not denied by any honest historian. 
Selfishness, sweetness and severity were strangely mixed in 
his character. He was devoted to his wife, kind to his children 
and reverent to his father, who for half a century had been a 
political leader. Jealous enemies poisoned the minds of the 
people so that his statue was overturned and his dictation no 
longer received, but his name and fame stand for a higher mark 
of progress than any of his successors have achieved. 

BOLIVAR 

CARACAS has many pretty little parks with statues of 
her heroes and one "Plaza Washington" for our own 
George. From the banks of the Potomac his spirit 
said she could bank on him if they wanted to plant a 
tree of liberty or chop down a political cherry or plum tree. 
The biggest and best park is the Plaza Bolivar, the main square 
of the city, with an equestrian statue of their loved liberator in 
the centre. 

Simon Bolivar was born at Caracas and educated in Madrid. 



TO HELL AND BACK I35 

He visited the United States in 1809 and, fired with the spirit 
of patriotism, returned to light liberty's torch in his own coun- 
try. After vigorous and varied experiences, which the patriotic 
Venezuelan knows by heart, he gained his victory over Spain 
at Carabobo. It was to him what Yorktown was to Washington 
and Appomattox to Grant. He was a liberty enlightening the 
Southern World and shot its rays of independence across Peru 
and Bolivia. Like all great men he was misunderstood and ma- 
ligned and compared to everybody from the devil to Napoleon. 
At evening time it became light and he who had devoted his 
mind, muscle and money to liberate his countrymen was called 
their Washington. 

Venezuela should feel friendly towards us, not only because 
she is situated so near us but because we proved near and dear 
friends when some of our volunteers died to free her from Span- 
ish rule; sent her $100,000 when 30,000 people were buried in 
the Caracas earthquake; cared for her banished general, Paez, 
and when he died returned the body with honor; and last and 
chiefest because we forced Great Britain to restore to her the 
territory of the Orinoco. 

FREEMASONRY 



FREEMASONRY is credited with some of the broadest 
and best uplifting influences in South America. There 
«~" J— are lodges in the various capitals but the Masonic 
Temple in Caracas is the largest of them all and the 
building attracts not only Masonic but other eyes with its four 
Solomon columns at the entrance. Dictator Blanco became a 
Mason in New York, and when he returned erected this hand- 
some building which has always been a centre of social, com- 
mercial and political influence. So powerful has it been that 
some of the laity and clergy, who are members of a church that 
has anathematized it as a secret organization, have nevertheless 
by hook or crook found admission. 

Bad men have never been able to give a good reason for 
their opposition to what makes a man worthy and well qualified 
in every position in life. Bolivar, South America's patriotic 
saint, consecrated himself to the cause of Venezuelan inde- 
pendence by the grave of our Washington, "who filled two conti- 
nents with his benefits and the whole world with his fame." 



186 TO HELL AND BACK 

George was a Mason, a member of a secret society which then 
and ever since has stood for the light of freedom and intelli- 
gence. According to the brainless, bloody bigotry of some 
churches and societies, this man whom all the world delights, to 
honor should have been excluded from the Episcopal church at 
Alexandria, Virginia, because he was a charter member of the 
Masonic Lodge, an active member until the time of his death, 
and in his Masonic capacity wore his white apron, blue sash and 
Master's collar and jewels when he laid the cornerstone of the 
Capitol at Washington. 

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY 



CARACAS drummed up a concert for us in the Bolivar 
Plaza where we sat and listened while the boys 
smoked, the girls flirted and the literary read novels 
and the cheap daily papers. Once the press was cen- 
sored but now any kind of copy is used as a filler whether it is 
a poem, an advertisement for new fashions, a heavenly obituary 
of some earthly man or woman, or a fulsome compliment of the 
administration. During an election or revolution the newsies 
call out extras. What we call revolutions are merely elections. 
The band selections were popular and classic as might be ex- 
pected in a town which had given birth to Madam Carreno, who 
played with great acceptance in North America. 

The Caraquenians take life easy and have a number of inno- 
cent sports. It seemed to me everybody was buying or selling 
lottery tickets. I saw people close their eyes for good luck, offer 
a kind of prayer and then touch a ticket at random which they 
hoped had the lucky number. On several vacant lots boys were 
playing tennis and baseball. There are many pretty girls who 
would make delightful walking companions in the parks were it 
not for the faithful Cerberus Papa and Mama. 

My day and night in Caracas had been filled with pleasant 
memories. Two of them were two pretty girls, who posed for 
a picture in the park, without any introduction, and President 
Gomez' handsome sister to whom I was introduced, who gave 
me her autograph and let me kodak her. 

The next day was Sunday. My train left at 7 :30, but it wasn't 
necessary to set any alarm clock, for I knew that the church 
bells would ding-dong, "Damn you, wake up and go to church," 



TO HELL AND BACK 187 

long hours before the engine bell rang to start. I was right. 
Sunday came, and with hasty ablutions, devotions and desayuno 
(morning breakfast) I headed for the depot through straight 
and narrow streets full of the faithful on their way to church, 
and mules carrying barrels of bread strapped on their sides. 
The one-storied, anti-earthquake houses were small, antiquated 
and painted in the various colors of the rainbow. This time the 
train was to take us down to Victoria, Valencia and Puerto Ca- 
bello. I didn't have to give my signature before starting for I 
had proved myself to be too innocent for any revolutionary at- 
tempt and instead of paying at the rate of 11 cents a mile I only 
paid eight, because as usual the railroad needs the money. 

DOWN AND OUT 



CARACAS is in a cup-shaped valley whose rim is 9,000 
feet and like a black fly our train climbed up and over 
fSgg it. Venezuela means "little Venice," but there were to 
jflflM b e twelve hours of mountain, hill, corn and coffee 
plantations, flower and fruit gardens and little villages before 
we saw the sea. Down we came from Las Teques, famous for 
climate, scenery and coffee, to La Victoria, the battlefield where 
Castro defeated the Matos revolution. Here in a half an hour 
we attacked and completely routed a big lunch at -the station 
while the natives mobilized about us and were willing to assist 
us. Among them I met a Minnesota missionary and wife with 
their class of well-behaved, well-dressed native girls. We ran 
through country now more level, by forests festooned with 
flowers and orchids, past places Humboldt had carefully investi- 
gated, but we barely had time to look into, and above the shore of 
Lake Tacariqua, with its pretty islands and uncanny trick of 
changing outlet, inlet and even its levels of its own sweet will. 
Valencia was next, the old capital which hates Caracas as the 
devil is said to dislike holy water. The city is a beauty and its 
buildings befit its fine situation. It is a live town and Yankee 
improvements have made it a hummer. Historically, Bolivar won 
Venezuela's independence here in 1821 ; commercially, there is 
an active market in farm products, cattle, hides, cacao, coffee, 
sugar and rum. The citizens may be excused for the pride they 
take in their Cathedral, Alameda, market, university and other 
educational institutions. Our train was transferred to a cog- 




188 TO HELL AND BACK 

wheel railroad and bumped down a tropical ravine for thirty 
miles to Puerto Cabello. 

PORT OF THE HAIR AND TORTOISE 

UERTO CABELLO is an old timer town of 1555. You 
may sit in the park or kneel in the church but they 
won't let you enter the frowning fort that Germany 
and England made a target of in 1902. The name of 
the town means "the port of the hair" from the sea saw the 
harbor is so safe a ship can be moored by a single hair. The 
length and color of the hair is not stated. I suppose it refers 
to the kind found in the strong butter of the local hotels or 
ships in the harbor. 

Here Sir Francis Drake was dreaded more by the natives 
than the storms, fevers, scourges and quakes that visited this 
coast. For the sake of timid tourists I can say that he died 
of yellow fever, and for fear he might rise again they weighted 
his heels with bags of shot and threw him with a splash into the 
bay. It is called the Gulf of Tears. The many the deadly fever 
had scourged were thrown into the water because there was no 
room to land them in the cemetery. 

The town is on a peninsula. In the lagoon behind it vessels 
come and anchor from everywhere filled with everything that 
people here and in the interior need and return with coffee, hides, 
lumber and copra for ballast. I saw the proud navy of the re- 
public, a single vessel, in dry dock for repairs. 

My lovable friend the late Judge L. W. Collins told me he 
witnessed a cock-fight here in the afternoon. The pit was 
crowded. The fight only lasted thirty minutes, which included 
several waits between the rounds. During this time the owners 
and friends of the game birds petted, caressed, bathed and kissed 
them. When one was killed, the natives who had bet and lost 
their all were very sad while the victor owner and his backers 
went wild with enthusiasm. 

The ocean and the "Oceana" after our ups and downs from 
Caracas were welcome. As we stepped aboard we were met by 
three strange passengers whom the sailors had captured on shore. 
They were listed as Mr. Podocnemis Expansa, wife and son, of 
the titanic turtle family who forever and a day have dwelt on 
S. A. 's shores. They were about four feet long and two feet 



TO HELL AND BACK 189 

high, weighed four or five hundred pounds each and for the next 
week were with us at the table every noon. It seemed they were 
tired of sea-bathing and had gone out on the beach to sun them- 
selves, tucking their heads in their shell, like the ostrich in the 
sand, imagining no one was near. Our cannibal sailors softly 
stole up, made them turn turtle and while they were on their 
backs, bound them with ropes. In this port of a hair we had 
a tortoise race. I took a rope and when Mr. Turtle snapped at 
it, drew it through his mouth like a bridle and with a halter-twist 
leaped on his back. After he had covered eight feet with his 
four feet I started to dismount, throwing my left foot over his 
head. As I did so a mischievous passenger pinched my leg. 
Naturally I thought it was a pair of jaws instead of fingers and 
yelled "murder." Everybody laughed, even the tortoise, but 
he tasted death and I tasted victory, for he soon was beheaded, 
thrown into a great pot of hot water, thus furnishing real and 
not mock turtle soup fit for King Neptune. 

HELL COLOMBIA ! 

I f* 1 0LOMBIA is washed by two oceans and has never 
IV^/J been physically or morally clean. It is traversed from 
llSSSc^l South to North by the Andes and travelers trying to 
l&-»5^* get away from the fever, filth, flies and fleas. There are 
three zones, hot, temperate and cold but the people seem to be 
in hot water most of the time. Essays on the population of a 
country are dry and flat yet there is an interesting field here 
among the four millions, half of whom are pure Spanish, the 
rest Indian half-breeds, negroes, mulattoes and Sambos, a mix- 
ture of blacks and reds. 

It was first called the Republic of New Granada, in 1861 
Colombia, and for the last few years has been called everything 
by those who unfortunately are her nearest neighbors. 

I suggest Colombia change her coat of arms to the classic 
"Dog in the Manger." She couldn't build a Panama Canal and 
wouldn't permit her Panama child or allow us to build it. So in 
1903 the department of Panama extended its ten fingers from its 
nose in defiance and seceded, whereupon Uncle Sam said "Bless 
you my child, you are old and wise enough to know your own 
mind and I'll be a father to you." And Panama proclaimed her 
independence as a Republic and let us build the ditch 



190 TO HELL AND BACK 

Colombia is too rich in resources to need any gold graft, 
political plum or 25 million dollar salve to soothe her wounded 
feelings. Grape juice, under certain conditions, must have some 
strange hallucinating power to cause an American statesman to 
rise up and declare that we are in honor bound to voluntarily 
give or allow ourselves to be held up for millions. She has al- 
ready been spoiled by over-indulgent Mother Nature. Colombia 
has valuable woods, vegetable ivory, fruits, tobacco, rubber, coffee, 
cocoa, sugar, petroleum, coal, salt, cattle, gold, silver, copper, 
platinum, marble, precious stones, emeralds and Panama hats, to 
say nothing of orchids and alligators. 

Two of her worst pests, strangely omitted from text and ref- 
erence books, are the bunco politicians in Bogota and bigoted 
priests everywhere. Colombia needs to tear down churches and 
build up schools. Her "primary" and "secondary" institutions 
are third class, and the best one at Bogota has been described as 
"dirty, forlorn, run down at the heels and unorganized." Of all 
the country's children hardly 150,000 go to school. This lack of 
parental care suggests that it is a wise child here that knows its 
own father, for in Bogota those unfortunate children we spell 
with a small "b" outnumber the legitimate, and for 15 years in 
Barranquilla more than 71 per cent of all the births have been 
illegitimate. 

In the old cathedral at Cartagena the traveler looks up at win- 
dows with iron gratings said to have been the grills of those happy 
Inquisition days when 400,000 honest sceptics were burned over 
slow fires to make them quick believers. 

I am in favor of urging Congress to appropriate 25 million 
dollars for New Testaments to be sent to these Colombian churches 
where priests and people meet to see cock-fights ; where if you will 
fall in line Good Friday and Easter you may wander out of 
the straight and narrow way the rest of the year ; and where one 
of the good fathers before death left bequests to fifty children 
he acknowledeged as his own, some of whom are now grown men 
and women bearing his name. 

The immorality of a bachelor clergy is no surprise in a tropi- 
cal climate because according to Cardinal Liguori "The most 
virtuous priests are constrained to fall at least once a month." 

Religion is judged by the care of its women. Here are many 
unmarried mothers ; lame and blind, for whom there are no hos- 



TO HELL AND BACK 191 

pitals ; women doing men's work, as in Peru and Bolivia, tending 
stock, butchering cattle, carrying heavy burdens of 150 pounds 
on their back with a week old baby at the breast. 

"The old man of the See" has fastened himself securely on the 
back of Colombia and she will never stand upright or walk in 
the path of peace or progress till she has thrown him off. 

Colombia is the paste gem of the ocean. 

MY SOUTH AMERICAN ALPHABET 

Andes 
Bastards 
Coast 
Drink 

Earthquakes 
Filth 
Guano 
Hotels 
Illiteracy 
Jesuits 
Kissing 
Llamas 
Monies 
Natives 
Ores 
Pirates 
Quick-temper 
Ruins 

Soroche (mountain-sickness) 
' Transportation 
Uprisings 
Vanity 

White-slavers 
'Xcessive prices 
Yankeephobia 
Zeal misdirected 



192 TO HELL AND BACK 



MALEDICTION AND BENEDICTION 



DON'T profanely damn your enemy. Politely invite him 
to go to South America. Once there he will remain a 
long time because the trains run once a week and the 
ships every fortnight. 

The best thing Uncle Sam ever did was to cut loose from 
South America with the Panama Canal. 

Mr. Roosevelt looks for "vast improvement" in S. A. within a 
century. She needs it. At the present rate of mental and moral 
progress it will require five hundred years. 

China and Japan are Christian countries in comparison. The 
heathen at our doors, who need the missionary more than they, 
are the South Americans who have neither the religion, ethics nor 
politics of the New Testament. 

South America is the highest bidder to what appeals to pride 
and passion. She has all the vices of Europe without its virtues. 
The muses of art, literature and music have been sacrified on the 
altar of fashion, passion, pleasure and commerce. About her 
only science is white slavery. 

She is rotton with the leprosy of lust. The walls of her 
buildings and churches are plastered with pictured advertisements 
of syphilitic disease. The most profitable profession is that of 
the doctor and druggist. 

South America's faults lie not in her stars but in herself. She 
cannot excuse her delinquencies and backwardness on the ground 
of climate, or Indian and negro blood. Her real trouble is ethical 
and moral, not physical. 

One of her wisest and most patriotic men said, "Our needs 
are character and intelligence. The discoverers and colonists be- 
queathed us boldness and cleverness, but their blood runs purely 
in the veins of but a few of our people, and even with the few it 
is not always rememberd that courage must be upright and that 
cleverness must thorough and true. We need what every nation 
needs, integrity and real education." 

South America's population equals that of Japan, but Japan 
has three times as many teachers and scholars in its schools as all 
of the South American republics together. 

Religion, politics and commerce have played their parts in 
South American history, the last two progressive and the first 



TO HELL AND BACK 193 

reactionary for it has shackled liberty and antagonized its every 
step. 

Like a giant spider Religion sat in the center of South Amer- 
ica and spun over it her endless web. The quiet beneath it thought 
it heaven ; the bold thought it hell, but when they tried to break 
away the spider caught them and sucked their blood. Today the 
web is broken, the spider sits spinning the same old web, but it is 
weak and brittle. 

The soul has its eternal rights and will not be darkened by 
statutes nor lullabyed by the music of bells. It will break from 
its prison, rush in a delirium of liberty over the whole earth, climb 
the highest peaks and sing and shout for joy. 

The writer wants no wedding but a divorce between church 
and state. He assails no religion but defends Christian North 
America against a repetition of the divided, diseased, dwarfed, 
darkened and damned dependencies of South America and the 
Old World. 

The traveler to South America flies to ills he knows not of. 
He can't breathe the rarified air of the Andes or the miasmatic 
mist of the Amazon; drink the poisoned water; eat the native 
food; wear good clothes unless wealthy; afford a doctor if sick 
or a decent undertaker if dead ; and even then lies awake in his 
coffin with the thought that if his friends fail to pay his cemetery 
rent his bones will be thrown out on the ash-heap where the dog 
will be his happy mourner. 

Don't go to South America unless you talk Spanish, are rich, 
have good health, are married and a member of the "established 
church," because in a population of more than fifty millions 
there are less than two hundred thousand Protestants. 

From the number of stranded Americans and young men of 
other nations I have talked with in South America who could 
not get away, and those who have returned, broken in body, hope, 
heart and pocketbook, I say, don't live in South America if you 
value the health, freedom and happiness of your body, mind and 
soul. 

When a man dies he goes to heaven or to South America. 




194 TO HELL AND BACK 

A BEARDED ISLAND 
KNOW not where his islands lift their fronded palms 
in air," I only know that after my Sunday shave I saw 
the Bearded Island of Barbados. It was so called by the 
Portuguese because the many fig trees seemed to wear 
whiskers. England owns it and its negroes, who are thicker to the 
square mile than the Chinks in Canton. Like ducks the natives 
swam out or paddled to meet us, and dived for the coins we 
threw them, putting them in their mouths for bills. Of the many 
row boats which came to take the passengers ashore we selected 
the "Ida" for it looked good and was manned by a tall darky who 
stood up and with the voice, vocabulary and gestures of another 
Stephen A. Douglas delivered a panegyric on the speed and safety 
of his craft. We got in and in a few minutes fell out at the cus- 
tom house with an officer because he insisted on telling us some- 
thing with an English accent we couldn't understand. 

It was Sunday and as usual in an English town everything was 
dead solemn. We climbed into a funeral carriage to view the re- 
mains of the city wrecked by hurricanes and tourists. The town is 
named Bridgetown. Whether from the Indian bridge the early 
settlers found there, or from the game of "bridge" over which the 
English soldiers and civilians pass many hours, I leave the future 
historian to decide. 

As a Mason I said "Hello" to the statue of Lord Nelson on 
the square and as an American minister went to the Anglican ca- 
thedral whose theology is founded on a solid rock and its building 
on coral. This church is new and seems to have a firmer founda- 
tion than the one before it which was destroyed by the great 
hurricane of 1780. There were many musty old monuments dat- 
ing from 1660 in the churchyard but we wanted something fresh 
and alive and drove out to Queen's Park, once the residence of 
the Commander in chief of the Imperial forces, but now a park 
for the people where tropical plants and palms have been trained 
to look English. 

KING SUGAR 

UGAR is king of the island and we drove over his cane 
dominion. His subjects, tall and sturdy, lined the road 
and waved their green hands at us. The barbarian 
horde of beet root sugar in northern countries has 



captured the sugar-cane market here and left Rum to rule the 



TO HELL AND BACK 195 

export market. Plantation sugar refineries are marked by wind- 
mills that suggest Holland. Of course in this land of hurricane 
it is only natural there should be wind-mills to grind the sugar 
cane. I cut a stalk, not for a walking stick, but for a stick of 
candy and sucked it. This is the black man's paradise. It is too 
hot for clothes, rum is cheap and his daily bread grows on trees, 
the leaves of which furnish an umbrella shade from the tropic 
sun. 



A HAPPY FAMILY 



ON our return we passed between squares of negro huts, 
small as martin boxes, roofed with dark shingles and 
made of gray wood. They stood above the ground on 
rough stone stilts. The largest of these boxes, not big 
enough for a first class dog-kennel, were filled with the old folks 
at home, their children and grandchildren. In one house the 
family's early ancestors were crowded out and hung by their tails 
from poles in the front yard. They chattered and extended their 
hands as we went by but I only monkeyed long enough to take 
their pictures. Really these Simians looked quite as intelligent 
and handsome as the natives who grinned at us through the door- 
ways and windows. 

Now we rode over glaring white coral roads flanked by ban- 
yan and mahogany trees and by Belleville's palm-guarded villas, 
hedged in by a wall of red, blue and yellow colored flowers. 
Near the town was a mule-car full of people dressed in their 
Sunday best. We were mutually interesting and like dromios 
stopped and stared at each other. 

Our driver hurried to Hastings, a sea-side resort, but we had 
no time to take a bath ; raced around the Garrison Savannah with 
its race-course and polo grounds; stopped at the house which 
Washington had occupied in 1751 with small pox for company, 
and cooled off in the Ice House. 

SMUGGLERS 

T is a combination of hotel, bar, restaurant, grocery and 

general merchandise store. Its side specialties are 

rum, swizel and flying fish, and although it was 

shut and Sunday the proprietor and his wife had an 

eye for business and let us in the back door with a gold skeleton 



mm 



If g TO HELL AND BACK 

key I furnished them. While I stood at the door with one eye 
on the coachman and the other on a policeman with a big white 
hat, Mrs. "M" and "L" bought canes of native woods, and slippers 
with heavy leather soles, fancy cotton woven top, open at the 
sides, heel and toe for ventilation. "L" looked like a smuggler 
when he came out for the saleslady insisted he should put the 
canes in his trouser legs and pack the slippers and other souve- 
nirs under his coat. Sunday selling is unlawful if you get 
found out, yet if one were arrested here and tried by the two 
magistrates he might receive more justice than before the twelve 
fools or fanatics in an average American jury. 

The Barbados belong to Great Britain and rowing out to 
our boat we passed the "New Zealand," the English dreadnaught 
that had followed us all the way from Valparaiso. I wondered 
whether Johnny Bull had given her orders to see that we didn't 
run away with her bearded baby Barbados, which is often called 
"Little England." 

On leaving, the sun set up one of the finest pictures on the 
canvas of land, sea and sky I ever saw. It beggared description. 
Even Mark Twain's account of a Turner sunset as a tortoise-shell 
cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes, would fail to do it jus- 
tice. 

SHIP ON FIRE 



THOUGH we took on no more passengers there were 
more rumors than ever — of officers who acted intoxi- 
|||||| cated but were simply drunk with love and passengers 
^■SgJfl w ho were white slaves and slavers to be detained at 
New York. 

There was more fire aboard than was necessary to make 
steam or cook hash. It drove sleep from my eyelids and 
me from my room. Approaching a sub-officer who had been 
genial and generous during the trip I persuaded him to take me 
down through the engine room into the last circle of the ship's 
inferno where the poor stoker devils were shoveling for dear 
life. Figuratively speaking I smelled a rat. Where there was 
so much smoke there must be some fire. Crawling over some 
ashes I entered a bin which had endangered the ship for the last 
24 hours with spontaneous combustion in spite of the tons of 
water poured over it, and had burned up tons of green coal 
taken on at Trinidad. But the Fates were propitious, my time 



, TO HELL AND BACK 197 

for burning had not yet come and enough coal was left to bring 
us to Long Island. 

CARIB ISLES 



THE boat gave the pitch and ocean thrilled me with its 
choral symphony. For a day we sailed over the blue 
Caribbean, by green islands with misty tops and little 
towns nestling by the water. I remembered them from 
a former West Indies' cruise. Porto Rico with American flag 
and schools; St. Thomas with bay rum and Bluebeard's castle; 
Dominica and Diablotin peak and its Roseau capital of rum 
and lime-juice memory where I saw four black babies baptized 
in the cathedral ; Haiti with its capital, Santo Domingo, where I 
visited the prison-cell of Columbus, and the Cathedral where 
his undisputed bones lie interred; Martinique, where Mt. Pelee 
in 1902 grew black with cloud, vomited smoke, ashes and fire and 
in a few seconds sent 30,000 happy-hearted people to death. The 
only one saved was a prisoner in jail. Martinique island pleases 
everybody. Its beauty, the artist; its flora, the botanist; its 
sugar and molasses, the merchant ; its half-bred, f rivolus and im- 
moral girls, the sports; Madame de Maintenon and Empress 
Josephine, who were born here, the historian ; and the Pompeiian. 
ruins, the tourist. 

HELD UP 

T was a dark wet morning when we warped into dock 
at New York City, but it looked brighter and bet- 
ter to me than any sunny South American city I 
had seen. I was glad to bid the "Vestris" and her 
crew good-bye. As I was leaving the wharf somebody tapped 
me on the shoulder and said "y° u are wanted on ship 
board." I went back, and instead of finding the purser 
wanting to apologize and make good for the bad treatment we 
had received, I learned one of my table companions was not 
permitted to get off but was to be sent back to Buenos Aires 
where he shipped. I interceded for him, telling the U. S. immi- 
gration officers I had been with him long enough to believe him 
honest and thoroughly good. They said they had orders but 
would do what they could. Poor fellow, I hope he did get 
through because I know that rather than go back on that boat 





198 TO HELL AND BACK 

he would jump overboard and keep company with the man 
we had lost a few days before, either because he had been swept 
overboard by a careless deck hand, been crowded off, or de- 
liberately jumped over, preferring the ocean accommodations to 
those the "Vestris" had provided. 

Leaving the gang, I learned that the two tall, shapely, painted 
female Poles, whom many of the passengers had admiringly 
looked up to, were prohibited from landing because they were 
tainted with white slave suspicion and were to be floated back to 
the tall timbers whence they came. 

"NO DUMPING HERE" 

UVENAL grieved that the Syrian Orontes had flowed 
into the Tiber and brought with it its language and 
morals. Our waters have been fouled with many an 
Old World immigration stream from South America, 
Russia, Italy and Spain. 

We have been preaching the dangerous gospel that the United 
States is the refuge and natural protector of earth's oppressed. 
To this land of promise with its room, resources, ; religion and 
republican institutions the modern Goths and Vandals have 
swarmed with their physical, mental and moral degeneracy. 
Many of them have become naturalized but not Americanized, 
showing an illiterate, pauper and criminal class three times as 
great as our citizens. They have proved themselves clay in the 
hands of political and priestly potters. As presidential assassin- 
ators, dynamiters, paupers, criminals and anarchists with strikes, 
riots and boycotts they have drained us educationally, eco- 
nomically and morally until we are beginning to recall the remark 
of Ambassador Bryce, "You cannot go on in America twenty- 
five years more in your great cities as you have been doing." 

Our flag is the banner of hope for all the nations of the 
earth. We owe much to the immigrant, here not by accident of 
birth but by choice. He has cultivated the soil, built railroads, 
shouldered arms and honored every department of American so- 
ciety and government. 

Our danger is too great optimism. We forgot a nation can 
perish as well as an individual. We must digest this foreign 
element or die of indigestion. The test of United States citi- 



TO HELL AND BACK 199 

zenship is not machines or money but the type of men it pro- 
duces. 

Problems press hard requiring sacrifice, earnestness and de- 
votion. Let us seek to solve them with charity for all and malice 
towards none and so make void the prophecy of Macaulay that 
our American republic will be wrecked in the Twentieth Century 
because its constitution has too much sail and too little ballast. 

On the wharf there was a good little woman who almost felt 
bad enough to want to go back to sea because a cruel inspector 
came up behind her and cut the egrets off her hat with a pair of 
shears, saying, "Excuse me, Uncle Sam wants these." 

HOME AND HEAVEN 



THE Limited pulled us out of New York and into a 
' blizzard at Cleveland where we had unlimited time to 
wait. There was no winter of discontent for my 
warm-hearted and handed theatrical friend John Saxe 
was on the train. We reached Chicago twelve hours late but my 
"Golightly 'Round the Globe" manuscript was on time and the 
proof of the first chapter placed in my hand that night as the 
train started for Minneapolis. 

Next day a crowd met me at the depot with an automobile. 
It was a gift from my many friends who doubtless hoped that 
while I had escaped the perils of seas, mountains, jungles and 
cities of South America, the auto would "get" me. 

So the band played, the movie man took us, and we went to 
the Nicollet Hotel where I spoke to a street crowd from the bal- 
cony, and then sat down at a table in the presence of my friends 
who toasted me. I replied that Minneapolis seemed like Heaven 
and any man who went to South America for pleasure would go 
to hell for a pastime. 



Golightly 'Round the Globe 

By REV. GOLIGHTLY MORRILL 

SPICY BREEZES 



From 



Hawaii, Japan, China, Philippines, Java, Burma, 
India, Ceylon, Egypt, Italy, Switzerland, Germany 



200 Pages — Photos — Cartoons 



A Good Book for Bad People 



PRESS COMMENT 

"Easy and Good-Humored." — American Review of Reviews, 
"A Kind of Uncensored Movie." — Chicago Standard. 
"I Am Reading It With Chuckles of Delight."— Elbert Hubbard. 
"A Compound of Snuff and Cayenne Pepper." 

— Benjamin Fay Mills. 



SOME OF THE CHAPTERS: 

A Prize Fight, Noah's Ark, Rag Dances, Ship-Bored, Sleepy 
Religion, Geisha Girls, The Yoshiwara, Altogether Baths, 
Making Opium, In Jail, Beastly Benares, My Native Bath, 
Carnal Caves, Captain Cupid, Naughty Naples, Camera Curse, 
Noisome Cologne, The Tipping Habit. 

CLOTH-BOUND, BLUE AND GOLD, $1.00 POSTPAID. 
G. L. Morrill, 3356 10th Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minn. 



The Fra 

SUBSCRIPTION BLANK 



THE ROYCROFTERS 

EAST AURORA, N. Y. 

Enclosed find two dollars, for which send me The Fra 
Magazine for one year and the book I have checked as 
premium ::::::::: 

Name G. L. MORRILL 

Street and No. 3356 10th Ave. So. 

City and State MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. 



CHECK YOUR CHOICE 

XI. Pig-Pen Pete, By Elbert Hubbard 

2. The Roycroft Dictionary, By Elbert Hubbard 

3. An American Bible, By Franklin, Lincoln, 

Emerson, Whitman, etc. 

4. Great Lovers, By Elbert Hubbard 

5. Life Lessons, By Alice Hubbard 

6. Good Men and Great, By Elbert Hubbard 

7. Famous Women, By Elbert Hubbard 

8. Great Teachers, By Elbert Hubbard 

9. Book of Business, By Elbert Hubbard 

Foreign Postage, 75 Cents, Canada Excepted 



Bread is the staff of life. For a 
safe and pleasant journey, use 



"PILLSBURY'S BEST 



99 



— G. L. M. 




Pillsbury Flour Mills Co 

Minneapolis, Minnesota, U. S. A. 



"A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOREVER" 

JOHN S. BRADSTREET 
& CO. 

INTERIOR FURNISHINGS 
AND DECORATIONS 

ESTABLISHED 1876 

327 SOUTH SEVENTH STREET 
Minneapolis, Minnesota : U. S. A. 

R. L. HARRINGTON 

The Fashionable Tailor 

37-39 Sixth St. So. MINNEAPOLIS 



Saxe Brothers' 



LYRIC 

Management of PROSPER F. SCHWIE 



MINNEAPOLIS' 

PREMIER 

THEATRE 



Presenting a continuous performance from twelve 
o'clock noon until eleven at night, with subjects 
that embrace the highest quality of photo-plays, 
together with a musical program of originality 
and merit. Our aim is to have our playhouse at 
all times a fitting place of entertainment for the 
mothers, daughters, sisters and wives — a place of 
comfort that makes its appeal to all the masses. 



The SAXE 

Management of G. E. BRADDOCK 



MINNEAPOLIS' FINEST, MOST ELABORATE 
AND LUXURIOUS THEATRE DEVOTED EX- 
CLUSIVELY TO PHOTO-PLAYS OBTAINED 
FROM THE WORLD'S LARGEST STUDIOS. 






cafe Mccormick 



18-20 'lMMRIfim& k 5th St So. 




FRANK McCORMICK, Prop. 



Restaurant de Luxe 



Where Business Men Meet 
for Luncheon 



SPECIAL BANQUET ROOMS FOR LARGE PARTIES 



Waldron 

The Dyer and Cleaner 

"nuff said" 

ELEVENTH STREET AND MARY PLACE, 
Minneapolis 



THE WHOLE ROAD 

HAS BEEN REBUILT! 

Over 17 million dollars have been spent for improvements 
on the Chicago Great Western during the last five years — 
think of it! $17,000,000 on 1,500 miles of road — nearly 
$11,500 per mile! ::::::: 

Here is what we DID for the benefit of our customers : 



Cut out or reduced curves 
to give the engineer a longer 
range of vision and minimize 
the swaying motion of the 
train. 

Laid heavier rails and rebal- 
lasted the roadway to give you 
a smoother ride. 

Double-tracked parts of the 
road and installed automatic 
safety signals to secure safety 
and expedite the movement of 
trains. 

Reduced the grades to se- 
cure uniform speed, make 
faster time, and carry heavier 
loads. 

Built new bridges so we 
could use stronger, heavier 
and consequently more easy- 
riding passenger cars, bigger 
freight cars and heavier lo- 
comotives. 

Bought new steel passenger 
cars, lined with asbestos, 
electric lighted, steam heated, 
cool in summer, warm in win- 
ter. Strong enough to resist 
the greatest impact, and more 
easy-riding and handsomer 



than any wooden car ever 
built. 

Bought new steel freight 
cars to transport your goods 
economically and without loss 
or damage. 

Bought new, powerful en- 
gines to insure punctual 
schedules for your own trans- 
portation and prompt de- 
liveries of freight. 

Built new depots to afford 
greater conveniences to travel- 
ers and saving of time and 
horsepower to shippers. 

Installed telephones for dis- 
patching and train use — an 
additional safeguard as well 
as expedient in emergencies. 

We adjust all claims and 
differences promptly. 

We aim to have no auto- 
cratic employes — every Great 
Western man should render 
a courteous, unobtrusive busi- 
nesslike service to every pat- 
ron and be always alert to 
your comfort and welfare 
from the moment you arrive 
at our stations until you 
leave. 



BEST SERVICE BETWEEN 

Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Omaha, Des Moines, St. 

Joseph, Kansas City, Waterloo, Dubuque and Rochester. 

OCEAN STEAMSHIP TICKETS VIA ALL LINES 

C. D. FISHER, AGFA., W. B. CHANDLER, Tourist Agent 

400 Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis, Minn. 




Great Western 



(Emphasize the "Great.") 



POWERS 



We are in business for Profit — not Pleasure. 



Our ambition is to serve you Better — better than we 
ever have — better than any other store ever has. 

To SERVE You BETTER we believe it is necessary 
to give you Better Quality — Better Value — than 
elsewhere at an equal price: we believe we do. 
Comparison Proves. 

The enormous stocks in this great store include every- 
thing necessary for men, women, children and the 
home — in larger variety, offering better assort- 
ments, than in any other store in the Northwest. 



POWERS MERCANTILE CO. 

The HEART of MINNEAPOLIS— 
Nicollet ave; Fifth st; First ave S. 



EDMUND D. BROOKS 

BOOKSELLER AND IMPORTER 

Handicraft Guild Building, 89 Tenth Street South 

Choice Gift Books 

A Large Collection of New and Old Books, Single 

Volumes and Sets, Many in Fine Bindings by 

Famous Binders, Suitable for Presentation. 

Rare and Unusual Books, First Editions of Esteemed 

Authors, with Authors ' Inscriptions, Original 

Autographs, Letters and Manuscripts. 

"Old Books, Rare Books and Books of Glorious Note." 
VISITORS WELCOME 



DAVID P. JONES, Pres. 

WALLACE H. DAVIS, Vice-Pres. 

WALLACE C. McWHINNEY, Sec'y & Treas. 



1 p 



w 



FIRST MORTGAGE LOANS, REAL ESTATE, 
RENTALS AND INSURANCE 



234.238 Mcknight building 





1EU©! 



'o ..■■- 




OUR LOW PRICES ON GOOD 
FURNITURE, RUGS AND 
STOVES MAKE IT WELL 
WORTH YOUR COMING TO 
THIS NEW STORE 

SECOND AVE. SO. AND 
SLXTH ST. 



WE CAN WRITE, COMPILE AND PRINT YOUR 

CATALOG, BOOKLET OR ADVERTISING 

MATTER OF ANY DESCRIPTION 

IN A MANNER THAT 

WILL BRING 

RESULTS. 



JM 



InJ 



p 



I PIMTEI 



CATALOG, CALENDAR, AND 
COMMERCIAL PRINTERS 
WHO KNOW HOW 

306-308 Sixth Street South 
Minneapolis, Minn. 




FOR THE BEST 
DESIGNING AMP PRINTING PLATES 

%B\IRMWERGRAVIRG 

15 o 17 South Sixth St.: 
MINNEAPOLIS. 





IF YOU ARE A SINNER GO TO YOUR BIBLE 

IF YOU ARE SICK GO TO A DOCTOR 

IF YOUR AUTO ACTS "BAD," OR YOU 
WANT A GOOD BUICK, GO TO 

Pence Automobile Co 

800-804 HENN. AVE. 



Tri-State Center 1335 



N. W. Main 1589 




Ladies' Misses' and 
Childi'ens Ready to Wear Garments 



Exclusive and 
Distinctive Styles 

Coats, Suits, Dresses, 

Skirts, Blouses, 
Millinery, Furs, Shoes 

The Best Equipped Specialty 
Store in the North West 

717-721 NICOLLET AVE. 

Six Floors Filled With 
Latest Styles 



New Home to Be Occupied About March 1, 1915 

For fifty years this bank has been closely identified with the 
commercial growth of Minneapolis. It has always welcomed small 
accounts, as well as large. It is the desire of its officers and di- 
rectors to give all the assistance possible to build up the industries 
of Minneapolis. 

First National Bank 

Resources $35,000,000.00 



WHITE 1 McNAUGHT 

JEWELERS 



BARGAINS IN DIAMONDS, 
WEDDING AND OTHER GIFTS 



506 NICOLLET AVENUE 



DUNLAP HATS SHIRT MAKERS 

MEN'S WEAR 




LONDON 
CHICAGO 

DETROIT 

MILWAUKEE 

MINNEAPOLIS 



RADISSON HOTEL BLDG. 



THE PHILISTINE 

: ELBERT HUBBARD : 

A PAMPHLET WITH A PUNCH 

TRUTH WITHOUT TRIMMINGS 

By A "Fra" Friendly, Fearless and Philosophic 

Subscription, $1.00 Yearly. ^ r 

Single Copies, 10c, Mast Aurora, N. Y. 



STEAMSHIP TRAVEL 

^— ■■ — — — i i — — ^» i 

UNDER THE AMERICAN FLAG 



flWITH HALF THE WORLD AT WAR THERE 
ARE FEW COUNTRIES DESIRABLE TO 
VISIT. :::::::: 

ffTHE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, ACKNOWL- 
EDGED TO BE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL IN 
THE WORLD, ARE NOW THE MOST POPU- 
LAR RESORT FOR THE OCEAN TRAVELER. 

flTHEY ARE BEST REACHED BY STEAM- 
ERS OF THE OCEANIC S. S. CO., WHICH 
FLY THE AMERICAN FLAG. : 



FOB RATES, SAILINGS AND ADVERTISING MATTER 
APPLY TO 

OCEANIC S. S. CO. 

673 MARKET STREET 

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. 



THIS WORLD IS A BILLIARD BALL. 
BALKE ALWAYS LEADS IN THE 
GAME. IF YOU WANT A CUE, 
WRITE HIM.— g. l. m. 




Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. 



Chicago, 111. 



U. S. A. 



r 



HOME LIGHTING 



The Effect of Good 
Illumination in the Home 

II Have you ever noticed in which home there la 
the greatest cheerfulness? In the home poorly 
lighted, or in the home well lighted? If you have 
not, let us tell you. 



Cheerfulness Comes 

Only to the Home Well Lighted 

His it not worth your careful consideration v hen 
we realize that u littli extra HgJ 
about the difference between gloomii . i 

cheerful^ And, too, when It costB no more to 

bring about cheerfulness, is it not worth your 
careful consideration? 

f Electric Service has made possible such results. 



The Minneapolis General 
Electric Company 



Our Enlarged Department 

For Misses, Girls and Children 



is fairly brimming over with 
clever, distinctive garments 
for the younger women. 
Our displays embrace count- 
less frocks, suits and coats 
that are quite irresistible in 
their youthful appeal. 
And for the young girls and 
little tots we are showing 
styles that from a fashion 
f andpoint are quite as im- 
portant as those brought out 
for the older people. 
Our prices, too, are delightfully modest. 





Women's and Children's Outfitters 

Nicollet at Seventh, Minneapolis. 



